So yesterday was met with the news that Final Cut Pro X was finally available and like someone waiting outside the famous PT Barnum museum in New York City, I plunked down my $299 to download the software and ensure that the information I had gotten over the past few months was correct. I was wrong. It was worse.

We joked at NAB that this was "iMovie Pro" and doggone it if that isn't what this turned out to be. A very souped up version of iMovie '11 but with iMovie's ability to "Export to FCP" removed. The basic operation is identical. Apple just added a few new features and rolled in some color tools and sound tools. But who cares about the actual operation of the editing interface, give me a couple of days and I'll by flying through the interface. That's not the problem. The problem is the insular thinking that Apple seems to have taken with this application. In fact, I just wrote a review on the App Store (where FCPX is hovering between 2.5 and 3 stars) and it sums up the major features that are missing or will cause us issues if we tried to implement this app moving forward. As I'm sure you won't see this review quoted anywhere in the Apple marketing blitz and it's always possible it won't even be posted on their site, here it is in its entirety…

Posted June 22, 2011 by Walter Biscardi - Rating: One Star (would have been a half star if I could)

Built from the ground up to be completely self contained, one editor, one machine. Cannot even talk to other Apple pro software.

Cannot open previous Final Cut Pro projects. period. We have 10 years worth of projects that cannot be opened.

Cannot collaborate with other editors. You can't simply hand off a project file to another editor who has the same media like you could with previous versions of FCP. All of your project organization is now globally contained in the application rather than in your project file. You would literally have to give that other editor your computer to open your project with all of your organization.

There is no way to customize the organization of the project media. "Events" are nice for home movies, home photos and such, but organzation is clunky at best for a professional video editing environment, whether that's working in your home or in a facility.

Media keeps wanting to copy itself to the local drive. We have over 60TB of media in our facility, we could not possibly copy that much to a local computer.

No directory structure when media is offline. When media is offline you simply get a red screen with an exclamation point. There is no "Reconnect Media" function or any other function that will tell you where the media is supposed to be. With previous versions you were presented the original media path. Since this is based on iMovie, it expects that everything lives internally.

Multicam tool, which was one of the best in the industry, completely eliminated.

OMF and XML export and import completely eliminated. There is no way to send projects to Apple's own software from within Final Cut Pro.

Color Correction tool is mediocre at best. Apple Color, which was a $25,000 piece of software when Apple purchased it, seems to have been eliminated and replaced with dots and presets. I've used a lot of color correction tools as part of my work and what Apple has presented is one of the worst I've seen from a supposed professional tool.

Cannot assign audio tracks. The Trackless editing makes things faster initially but we send all our audio out for ProTools mixing. As such we need to assign audio to tracks. Narration to Track 1 and 2. Interviews to Tracks 3 - 6 and so on. So our audio engineers knows exactly what's on which track.

No true video output. According to an AJA Video Systems PDF on using their Kona cards with FCPX what you see on your external display is a "preview" version of your video. Not a true video signal that you can use for color correction or confidence viewing in front of a client. Simply cannnot have a professional video editing application without true video output.

No support for Capture from Tape (outside of Firewire) or Edit to Tape. We capture from and edit to tape just about every day. HDV is really not a format we use very much but if we did, well then we were perfectly set up in FCPX.

All in all the worst product launch I've ever seen from Apple or pretty much any software manufacturer. Instead of a nice suite of applications that worked well together (FCP, Color, Motion, SoundTrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro) you now have one big app that really doesn't do all that much well. It completely ignores the 11 years of existence by giving you zero options to open older projects. We called it iMovie Pro when it was debuted back in April and quite honestly, that's what it is. When you open the application and the first thing you see is "Import iMovie Events" and then you select File > Import and the two of the four options are "iMovie" there's no denying that this application was built on iMovie's consumer foundation rather than FCP's professional foundation. There are some neat features included and there's no denying the interface itself is nice to look at.

But I get the sense that Apple just didn't want to take the time to re-write all of the features that made this a solid professional application and dominated the post production market. Why, I'm not sure, but we will be moving our shop away from FCPX over the next month or so. As I noted in a blog entry back in April, Apple really dropped the ball on this one. Living in their insular world in Cupertino they have come up with what they think a professional editor requires to get the job done. In my 20 year professional experience, they missed the mark by a wide margin.

If you are a one man band or never have the need to collaborate with anyone else or ever open any of your old FCP projects, then this is for you. Especially if you have never used a non linear editing system before. Otherwise, you'd be best to either steer clear of this application, or download it to use for your home movies and private projects. Steve Jobs was wrong. This is not "awesome." Not even close.

----------------------------------------

End of the review.

In fact I forgot to mention the fact that layered Photoshop file support is gone. All photoshop files appear as a flattened image. In our shop we build multi layered graphics for name supers for example. I'll have 12 layers of names and the 13th layer is the backdrop. So I create one graphic for 12 supers. Now I'd have to create 12 graphics.

Just the fact that we can't open old FCP projects alone would be enough for me to stop, but add up everything I've mentioned (and more) there is just no way that any amount of fancy new tools built inside a stand alone app that traps you in said stand alone app is going to make it in our workflow. It's easier to move the projects into Avid or Adobe Premiere than it is to move them into the new Final Cut Pro.

Let's just forget the word "professional" for the moment. You're an upstart filmmaker who has this installed on your iMac at home cutting your latest project. You gave the media to a buddy of yours who has offered to help on his laptop. So you send the Project file over to him and guess what? He'll see your timeline but all that organization you did with the smart folders, keyword folders, etc.... are gone. All he sees is a huge "Event" with all your media just laid out there. Whereas if you were both working in Final Cut Pro 7 or earlier, when you handed him the Project file, all of your organization (bins, sequences, etc…) would all be there.

So far the only people I've seen with positive reviews of the application are those who were in the beta test program, application developers or those who do not make a living as a video editor. I simply will not "cut Apple some slack because it's a 1.0 release." That's complete BS. In 1999 when Final Cut Pro first came out it was the new kid on the block. So what if it didn't have certain features, it saved you from having to buy a $100,000 Avid or $30,000 Media 100. It's 2011 and Final Cut Pro is (was) the broadcast standard editing tool. Apple has had at least two years to completely redevelop the software from the ground up. To have left out so many of the features that were already in Final Cut Pro 7 and say 'well it's a 1.0 release and it will grow as we move along' is just completely self serving. In other words, the developers at Apple, who do NOT make a living as a video editor, decided that they would completely re-invent video editing based on their preconceived notion of what a video editor does. If it's not right the first time, we'll just develop more features, on our own timeline without telling anyone what we're doing, until we get it right. It's just painfully obvious this is a consumer product first and a professional application second. If that's Apple's goal, that's perfectly fine because the consumer market FAR exceeds the professional market. Just tell us so we can move on instead of waiting out this two year game of "what will they do."

For now, and it's sad for me to say this, I'm done with the game. This was the product that completely built my company starting in 2000 / 2001 and now it's time for me to say goodbye. As I tell everyone else, if the tool isn't working for you, then find a tool that does. Fortunately we have Adobe Premiere which has made incredible strides of late and already supports our AJA Kona boards. We also hear that Avid is on a path that will open up the cards soon as well.

So it's been a good 10 year ride and if the application does truly get to a point where we can use it again, we could always bring it back. But for now let me just say, Goodbye Final Cut Pro and Thanks for all the Fish.

It is hard taking you seriously when most of your complaints about FCPX just are not true. For example, you say FCPX copies all of your material upon import to your local drive. It doesn't unless you tell it to. Otherwise it only links to the original material wherever you have it.

Who goes out in public and criticises something he does not yet understand? That is just weird and.. not very proffessional. Learn the program first nd you will see how powerful this software really is.

That column and the one that preceeded it were discussed at length back in June and July. Richard Harrington completely debunked his entire initial review. I debunked it in an article for Variety. Long story short, David Pogue has no clue what he's talking about when it comes to professional video editing tools.

Apple should really go back on supporting Final Cut Pro 7 and quit messing around with Final Cut Pro X... Final Cut Pro X is a JOKE. FCPX is more like iMovie Pro... Idk what apple was thinking when they made this...

Lots of video editors were pretty excited when FCPX first come out, but turns out it was a Huge Disappointment. I'm a huge fan of apple products, and I love editing and using Final Cut Pro. I was excited when FCPX was coming out but turns out it Sucks!... no wonder its only $300 dollars...

no offense meant, but you aren't funded by Adobe now, are you?
I was always switching between FCP7 and Premiere and both of them had their advantages.

As i have seen only presentations i am excited about the new timeline and i think they need to implement some missing features(see above) but it strikes me that you are very unconciliatory.... building youre livelihood and all... i will wait and see. and keep an open mind.

I'm not funded by anyone and at this time I have Adobe Premiere Pro CS 5.5, Avid Media Composer 5.5 and Autodesk Smoke 2012 all in my shop for evaluation. The only thing I'm not testing any further is FCP X as we've done enough with that to know it's not for us. Maybe in the future, but not today.

FCP 7 also is not for us even in the immediate future. We had two projects saved very nicely today by Premiere Pro with XDCAM and AVCHD footage that was unreadable because the folder structure was missing and no longer available from the shooter.

One of the things about me is I'm an independent, not beholden to anyone. I think at the end of the day, we'll probably end up with both Premiere Pro and Avid in our shop. If we can justify the expense, Smoke will definitely be staying with us. Might be able to put that into the Color enhancement suite.

Not sure why I would need to be concillitory towards Apple or have a "wait and see" attitude when I've been waiting for 2 years. Why is it that developers are just now going to get the XML code this week so they can start developing XML tools? Shouldn't they have had that BEFORE the product released if this was indeed designed for professionals? Apple's 100% reliance on third parties to "add back in" the features that we need is not something I'm going to support. I will end up spending near $1,000 per seat for one app instead of the old $1,000 for a suite of apps. At that point, I'll might as well purchase the full Adobe suite as it gives me more bang for the buck.

For folks that want to use FCPX, I say have at it. It's not for me or my business.

Yep, I saw that but why do I want to keep supporting software that's EOL? It's still inefficient with digital formats which we're already finding how much faster we can turn around projects in Premiere for that one reason alone.

I know big institutions that are excited about this, but I'm seeing FCP X as the opportunity to move forward rather than reach back for a 2 year old solution.

I have been all over the place with this decision by Apple.
Denial (this isn't happening to me!), Anger (why is this happening to me?), Bargaining (I promise I'll be a better person if...), Depression (I don't care anymore), Acceptance (I'm ready for whatever comes)
But now that cooler heads have prevailed. Mine anyway. This is where I ultimately stand.
Apple tends to be the Area 51 of the computer world. I'm leaving open the idea that this software is just so advanced that it's hard to grasp and take advantage of now. And yes, it is obviously incomplete. It does contain some pretty awesome features. I have always believed that Avid's biggest problem is that they don't completely revamp their software from the ground up and make the necessary advancements it needs to take it further. Lose the old workflows and make new ones that are more geared for NOW. They can't. They would alienate so many entrenched users by making them start from scratch. Who can do that? But sometimes you have to make the right changes from the ground up. Apple MAY be taking the chance that no one else has the guts to. They are definitely losing client base. That has to be a part of the equation. In the long run it may turn out to be so far ahead of other software venders because of this rebuild. Apple can afford to do this. Avid can not. They would be finished.

Maybe they had the guts to do what needed to be done. I'm keeping my copy and I am going to learn it on the side and grow with it.

Here I sit on my pragmatic fence reading all the comments about problems of FCP X, comforted in the knowledge that FCP 7 is still a great editing programme. However I’m noticing the wind is changing direction towards other systems. As I am due for a hardware upgrade later this year I will be upgrading to another Apple hardware solution but not necessarily a software solution, are you hearing me Apple. Avid can you get your head around having your software available for another operating system. So with this in mind, some open ended observations……

1) I believe Apple did a “soft launch” on this programme because “they had to go to market” hence they pulled their punches because all the assets won’t on the table, yet! Surely they could have baked it bit longer!

2) With the issue of tape & 4k file handling , not ! Will these issue & others be solved with the upcoming “thunderbolt launch” Who knows I don’t ?

3) Now FCP X is an “App.” (go figure! ) Is the plan to allow third parties to create new apps that plug into FCP X, expanding it’s potential & overcoming present limitations? Remember Apple gets a % off every third party app. downloaded i.e the I phone or I pad business model. Hence significantly upgrading the potential of the system for everyone. I would gladly pay another $300 for a plug in that reads “old” FCP 7 files & another $300 for a bin management app . I speak for myself here, I don’t care about cost I just want it to work!

4) With the issue of “Project Portability” or lack off it. Does the Apple plan include the use of “I Cloud” i.e. accessing your project in the cloud ? If this is the case, I’m running for the hills screaming Adobe or Avid ! Good luck sharing via “I clouding” SD 8/10 bit resolution or even better 5k HD projects, lol!

Point 1, I believe could account for a lot of issues presently being experienced with the new system ( inexcusable as it is ). Point 2 & 3 could potentially be innovative & exciting whilst Point 4 is the stuff of nightmares, showing a total lack of knowledge about the industry they sell software to.

Note: I am not a fanboy of Apple, I am pragmatic open minded professional & realise nothing stays the same forever, including Apple, Avid & Adobe, everything changes, particularly software. But one thing I know as I sit on my pragmatic fence, the grass sure looks greener over in the Adobe paddock.

Only because I can't resist adding to the evergrowing garbage dump of comments on FCPX, who knows, someone might print it all someday and use if for a ladder to the moon...but I came from that paddock mentioned just 3 years ago, and believe me, back then it was filled to the brim with cow pucky.

PPRO CS3 and CS4 was super stinky on a mac, and CS5 is where things began to stablize. During the past 3 years I have had to take no less then a 1/2 dozen irretrievalby broken Premiere projects from clients and put them into FCP to finish the job. I've seen a lot more disasters on the cutting room floor. However, CS5.5 looks promising, but I have not done a single production job there yet - but if I had too, I would have almost a decade of bad memories to fall back on (albiet most all on crapo PCs that exploded on the hour).

Consider this: unless you have some superduper macpro, u will still have to wait for effects to render on the timeline, and Media Encoder is a taudry beast that hates being tamed. AME makes Compressor look like an iPhone app.

But even I am having doubts about FCPX, as I just spent 1 hour trying to composite a single image above a clip, and have transitions at both ends of the image only. Still have not figured it - out even with one of the brilliant minds here on the cow helping...so things do not bode well...I see dark iclouds on the horizon...

In short, he says he questions why Adobe wanted him in the first place since he told them flat out that CS4 was a terrible piece of software. They listened, hired him and I can attest that CS5 and now 5.5 are great pieces of software to work with.

Adobe was able to completely re-invent the underlying core of their software to 64bit, add wholesale improvements and stability, all without destroying the basic workflow.

The statement is an admission of a product that had to improve to compete. A class statement from what has always been a class operation at Adobe. I've been using Photoshop / After Effects / Illustrator for years now. Just never clicked that purple icon until last week.....

Adobe was able to completely re-invent the underlying core of their software to 64bit, add wholesale improvements and stability, all without destroying the basic workflow.

Thanks Mike-- I was just about to pose the question, should we expect/fear Adobe will need to start from the ground up too in order to go 64-bit, and there's my answer. I've got to say, even amongst all the bickering, the Cow never fails to set my mind at ease.

BTW-- Count me among the masses who took FCPX out for a spin, drove about two blocks, got out of the car to make sure that it was in fact a car, and just wound up staring at it with bewilderment. I started googling FCPX when I couldn't import motion files-- I then realized that my first run-in with Steven's Law was just the tip of the iceberg. Someone wake me when the 'suite' has been fixed, you can find me behind the purple door.

Excellent review! You speak my mind, Walter! I also more and less build my business on the fact that FCP was a great application for the money. And thanks for the ride, Apple! Now You've served it on a silver platter for Avid and Adobe to pick up the market that You built up. I really don't understand it....? Ahrr, who am I kiddin' They are not listening anyway......

Come to think of it, in hindsight, I think the writing on the wall dates back to the NAB 2010 SuperMeet. I remember how embarrassing it was when Avid and especially Adobe gave really compelling presentations of their updates and the FCP team basically showed up with some slides of movie posters.

I remember thinking it would have been better if they hadn't presented at all. It really made me doubt what was going on with FCP behind the scenes even back then.

Then in 2011 they forced Avid and Adobe out to give their sneak peek. A very specific canned presentation with no Q&A. Just a sip of the kool-aid.

I think the writing has been on the walls for over a year. I think we were all too blinded by hope to look sideways at what Avid and and again, especially Adobe were up to.

Like Walter, we're also exploring some new options and I'm liking what I'm seeing with Premiere Pro. That little purple Pr icon has been sitting in my dock for more than a year and I had very little reason to click on it. Until now. I clicked on it this past weekend.

You remember that SuperMeet too? Avid and Adobe get up there and show some super cool stuff. Apple gets up there and crickets.....

I guess that's why they locked everyone out this year and instead of 2 to 3 hours of really cool presentations we got the one hour of.....

I know I've been smiling a lot lately wondering why in the heck I didn't click that Premiere icon sooner. And we're installing an evaluation of Avid MC today as well so it's fun getting out there and exploring more options rather than blindly following what one company tells us is the best for us. And "waiting" for them to try to make good of a bad situation.

They should go back and watch a commercial by this little upstart computer company from 1984......

Apple is addicted to "changing" things. Unfortunately, most of their success comes from "changing" things downward to make products more widely accessible. In pro markets that won't cut it.

I have a feeling this will backfire, as the apparent target audience for FCPX won't likely shell out the $300, and they will STILL be confused by the layout. It's not dumbed down enough for the target audience, but TOO dumbed down for its current user base. What a mess.

I just wanna know who these "professional" NDA beta testers are/were!! This is ridiculous!! In other news, while I plan on staying with my stable and reliable FCP7/Kona setups, the Premiere Pro page is looking nicer and nicer the more I visit it!
It's really a no brainer as a AE and PS user, but time will tell.

And you are correct…. I'm not throwing my $300 into the pot… not even "just to see." I already have enough information to know it's not going to work with my workflow! All this as a client called me today for a project we completed last winter!! Nuff said!

You should definitely download a trial of Premiere (something you can't do with FCPX, maybe we know why now). You've got nothing to lose, but I bet you will like it.

Since the release of FCPX I've become quite the Premiere evangelist. Over the years I bought into the pro-FCP hype that Premiere was a mere toy. These days, Premiere offers more than FCP and we know where Adobe's commitments lay - they aren't going to punk us to go chase the mass market. I'm really, really loving it and don't really care about FCPX any more. Premiere is better in every way.

I agree. I have a few projects in progress right now and I think the trial is 15 days?? I'll wait until I have a break so I can really put it through it's paces. I have the CS4 suite, minus Premiere, so I already know Adobe has made great strides in this market. Premiere stopped being a toy a few years ago, as my PRO-editor friends have offered great reviews. I was impressed with the new features, BUT never thought much of it because SURELY FCP8 would match or beat it with the next update, right??? LOL!!! Like you, I've stopped being shocked and stopped reading reviews of FCPX. The pro-FCP hype was real…we had a viable and flexible piece of software that built businesses and put food on the table. Very disappointing… but at least we have options. All of my hardware seems to be compatible with Premiere, so if and when I make the move, I'm happy that the investment won't be huge.

Ron, you can download Adobe CS 5.5 for a free 30 day trial. Fully functional, no watermark. That's the ENTIRE CS 5.5 production bundle.

AJA released their new 9.0.1 Plug-In for CS 5.5 today. Be sure to download their 9.0.1 Driver as well. So to try it out:

Install CS 5.5

Install AJA Kona 9.0.1 Driver

Reboot

Install AJA Kona 9.0.1 Plug-In for CS 5.5

All absolutely free so you can try it out with no obligation to buy anything.

I can tell you I was using the Kona 3G board in perfect sync with CS 5.5 today during testing. Playing raw P2 MXF files (720p/30) in the Adobe timeline with filters and transitions in realtime. No background transcoding, no background rendering. Just the raw files and play.

We also have FCP 7.0.3 on the same machine. Both co-exist with no problems. You can look at my two (soon to be three) videos on Vimeo showing how to Open an FCP Project in Premiere and how some of the FCP workflow translates over to Premiere. It's about as seamless as it could be.

Wow… cool, thanks! I was JUST on the AJA site this morning and it wasn't there. I must have been too early. I will definitely go back for it. Thanks for the info on P2 too!! That's incredible as i use a LOT of P2 footage.

I honestly think once I map my keyboard, it will be smooth sailing. I'm very much a keystroke editor. I've seen Avid guys come to my studio and do the same without many FCP hours under their belt.

You'll see you can select both Avid Media Composer and Final Cut Pro 7 as pre-built keyboard shortcuts. This will translate most of your keystrokes and shortcuts directly from FCP 7 into CS 5.5

Not every last thing will translate, but most of it will. I'm reading "An Editor's Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro" by Richard Harrington, Robbie Carmen and Jeff Greenburg right now to help me better learn the application.

1- Request the addition of 10 key features necessary for the new software to be used in environments such as TV Stations, Feature Film Editing, Production and Post Production Houses

2- Release Final Cut Pro 7 as a free download to those who bought version X, in order to provide a legal way for us to keep using the product when adding new editing stations, while these 10 key features are not in place in the new software. (Same as they did with iMovie)

Great review Walter… From the days of Cinewave, I have always respected your opinion on FCP issues. This is a sad day for FCP users. I will also be giving Adobe a second look, but I'm not going to abandon Apple just yet, as I have been using 3 solid systems for 10 years. I see no reason to rebuild, nor do I see a reason to upgrade to what is obviously a sub-par product. Very sad indeed, but I can still pay my mortgage with what I have.

I will wait for a FCPX.2 update and see if they address the issues us professionals have. FCP7 with AJA Kona boards is a solid editing system. "iMovie Pro" will not be purchased by me.

Wow, CineWave. Still the only product that allowed realtime Chroma Key. As in Edit to Tape without rendering realtime Chroma Key. I think that was 6 years ago. And then Apple did something that prevented video card manufacturers from putting RT effects on their boards.

That was a great product and it was headed up by Andrew Baum who was the original Final Cut Pro product manager back in '99.

The good 'ole days, huh?
How is Premiere with the Kona products? Is it really just a software install at this point?
I use AE and PS, so Adobe would be a natural replacement if I went that route….not to mention all of the good feedback I've gotten from editors.

Makes you wonder what Apple will do with the Logic Suite too….and Color for that matter.

So I take it that FCP X completely vaporized your copy of FCP 7, and melted your CPU, and that's why you're going to spend tens of thousand of dollars to buy new equipment, buy and learn new software; spend hundreds of hours migrating data, and kiss Apple goodbye forever?

Funny. My copy of FCP 7 is running just fine. Wonder what happened to yours?

No, I'm not a "big name" editor (well in some circles) like you, but I earn a passable living at least in part as an editor, and started cutting in 1972 on a Movieola. Last week I was earning money with FCP 7 and this week I'm earning money with FCP 7.

Geez: If you can't use it professionally, don't use it. FCPX was never presented as a drop-in replacement for FCS.

During the past few days, the rants from the industry cutters has risen to the level of hysterics, with people, including yourself, vowing to rip out their $100,000 installations and switch to new hardware, and spend months learning new gear ... all because THEIR OWN expectations were TOO HIGH.

Would it have been better for Apple to delay, and add in the missing features? Certainly in your perspective, yes. But Apple didn't become the most valuable company in the world by being stupid, either.

Calm down. Take a breath. Nothing has changed except that there's a new tool out there. No: it's not as competent as the old one, but the old tool is still functioning just fine.

On the one hand, you're comparing a product that took 10 years to reach maturity, with one that took (gasp!) 2 years to write (from scratch no less) and you want them to match. You know: it could be done... but you'd need to give them a couple more years, so that their 4-year product comes closer to the venerable FCP7. (Walter, you may know editing, but you don't know squat about computer programming.)

If you're feeling hurt; jilted and full of "well, I'll show THEM" teenaged spite... Frankly, you're insulted and now you're pissed off. You might want to consider a slightly more mature and reasoned response than abandoning your core business of 10 years because your feelings were hurt.

I can only wish you the best. You're about to throw the baby out with the bath water, and you're in for a rough ride.

I'd say: get a good night's sleep, and go back to work using FCP7 tomorrow. You'll find it's still working fine.

OK: go ahead and rip me a new one. I'm 65; spent 40 years with computers and film/video, and judging by the ballistics in your article, I would expect no less.

No dude, you are just a voice of sanity in a world gone insane. No problems there, or here. I think the voices you hear are of human nature...messy, silly and emotional. But you know, if we were not like that as a culture, there perhaps would be no good stories to tell in the first place, making something like FCP or FCPX mute. So in a way, the "bad" behavior in the world is about 90% of what we like to watch, no? It's always the dark force being conquered by Luke, or John Wayne, or Burt Lancaster in "From Here to Eternity. BRING IT ON FOLKS! It will all be in a film someday...
Jigs in Nepal

So I take it that FCP X completely vaporized your copy of FCP 7, and melted your CPU, and that's why you're going to spend tens of thousand of dollars to buy new equipment, buy and learn new software; spend hundreds of hours migrating data, and kiss Apple goodbye forever?

Funny. My copy of FCP 7 is running just fine. Wonder what happened to yours?

As you might have read in some of my other responses I have said (multiple times) that our 6 copies or so of FCP 7 is still running just fine here. It's still the same inefficient tool with the digital formats that have been brought to the post production marketplace in the two years+ since it was originally released.

I have been planning to move away from FCP 7 for 6 months now at least and while I knew FCPX would not be the replacement for us back in April, I did wait until the final public product to make the final decision. I wanted to see specifically what Apple put in the product. People seem to think this was a rash decision, it was not.

The final nail in the coffin is the lack of legacy project support. We do a lot of news and documentary programming which often requires us to go back 4 to 6 years to pull out old projects to either revise them or pull elements from them. The new FCPX will never support legacy projects moving forward due to the nature of the underlying design. You might be able to move a sequence forward, but your entire project with full organization as it was, won't happen. I never say never, but from what I'm told by people who know a lot more than me, it won't happen.

So what I need today is a very efficient tool that works natively with any digital codec that walks in the door. Being an independent Post Production facility, we do not shoot original material nor do we own cameras. So on any given week we will literally receive very format under the sun and we need to edit with it. An example I've already cited, it took three days to convert 24 hours of GoPro material to Apple ProRes before I could start to edit with it. That's very inefficient.

The FCPX does work natively with codecs sort of, it converts to ProRes in the background, and that's better. But it's the lack of legacy project support that's at the very top of the list why we are not moving forward with the product.

As I've already shown, Adobe Premiere does a great job of opening FCP projects so that's a huge relief for a production company like ours.

So right now, FCP 7 still works and it's currently an inefficient tool for our workflow. FCPX is not ready for us at this time. With Apple's secrecy, I have no idea what features they will truly add back to the application nor their timeframe. Nor do I expect them ever to add legacy project support. In addition, the removal of FC Studio 3 pretty much forced our hands to a new tool as I will be adding one or two more suites before the end of this summer.

So this is a decision on my part to leave the application and move to another, more efficient product for our workflow that allows us to retain access to our legacy projects. Whether that is Avid or Adobe remains to be seen based on our testing.

I've edited on 10 different platforms in my 20 years. Premiere Pro would be the 11th, Avid Media Composer would be a return to the first NLE I ever used. My editors are very excited about what they've already seen from Premiere and I have to say, it's a much more efficient tool in just my short time using it than FCP 7 is today. There's also very little my editors will have to learn to make the transition, it's a very easy move from one tool to the other.

So I'm just presenting my opinion here on my decision to leave FCP at this time. The beauty of all this is that I'm not "throwing the baby out with the bathwater." All of the infrastructure that I've built for the past 11 years will plug right into the Adobe / Avid workflow. So I literally just have to change the software. If I had to change out all the hardware too, well THAT would be throwing everything away for a new workflow.

Everyone will have a different opinion on what to do for an NLE moving forward. Nobody is right, nobody is wrong. You have to make your decision based on your needs. I've made mine.

Walter - YOU RULE. I've always had major respect for you, and this article/your comments are no exception. You said everything I've felt, to the letter.

People like Tracy forget that sticking with FCP7 is making a commitment to obsolescence. Maybe they are so new to the scene that they don't realize we've already held out for two years while watching other packages get some amazing features that FCP7 can't do, and new formats have been released that are burdensome in FCP7.

Maybe they aren't really thinking about the competitive pressures in this economy, never mind this horribly over-saturated "I'm a video guy too" market, that DEMAND we be able to handle everything thrown at us. Pros can't afford to be obsolete in this market. They also can't afford to shell out thousands of dollars to support FCPX - it doesn't offer enough real value to justify repurchasing a bunch of compatible hardware or buying a $500 plugin (AD) to replace a feature (OMF) that, by all rights, should never have been removed in the first place.

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Either way, let me just say that I am with you - Premiere Pro is so full featured and user friendly that WHO CARES where FCP is headed at this point. Others can wait out the alleged updates it might get over the next few years, I've already moved over to Premiere and without incident. Its integration with the other CS tools is nothing short of amazing, and its native support for R3D etc. make it truly ready for professional use. The cost of moving to Premiere from FCP is only the cost of the software, so it's not a tough choice to make, either.

and that's why you're going to spend tens of thousand of dollars to buy new equipment, buy and learn new software; spend hundreds of hours migrating data, and kiss Apple goodbye forever?

In case you just want the Cliffs Notes version of my response. Money required to make the transition to Adobe Premiere: The price of Adobe Premiere. I do not have to change anything about my infrastructure.

FCP X is to FCP 7 as is what a new Mercedes is without the trunk, two wheels most of the air bags, no hood, one headlight and just the rear brakes, to my 1990 Ford Escort that has >300,000 miles on it and still gets more than 37 mpg

Autodesk has been kind enough to offer us an evaluation of Smoke as part of our testing process. It is a pricey tool and from what I've gathered, most folks use it as a finishing workstation. Color grade, graphics, effects, etc...

That's what I'm going to look at it for. Maybe pair it up with our Resolve workstation. But there are folks out there actually doing full on editing with it too. I've never used it and am very interested to see what it's all about. Will definitely include it in my blog.

Just have to add my thanks for your clear thinking on this. I could even accept Apple's decision to back away from the pro market, if they had had the balls to admit it, rather than the usual "totally awesome" childish spin from One Stoopid Loop. That is just insulting to all of us professionals.

Adobe Premiere Pro is a very easy transition from FCP quite honestly, especially for the educational market. Can even map the keyboard the same. CS6 looks like it will be the FCP 8 (and maybe 9?) that we all wanted.

I'm betting you already have at least one copy of the Adobe Production suite installed so you can try it right now.

Here's my vimeo video showing you how easy it is to open an FCP project in Premiere.

Actually Walter I was more concerned with the financial ramifications of a move away from Apple as schools usually purchase Apple support contracts. So with this release Apple has just made FCP, possibly, a useless software to teach if the majority of production houses are going away from it. With that in mind have schools just absolutely wasted thousands of dollars on software and care packages over the last year.

The actual move to Premiere or Avid won't be as much of an issue as the wasted money on Apple. Wonder if there's a case to get some of that money back from Apple considering their extreme shift in direction? Who knows? Considering an institution invests in Apple to teach students software and workflows that translate to the real working world, I could also see students being upset about this.

A friend of mine an a school asked me about setting up a 20 seat media room, he was wondering Premiere but thought he would check with me first, I told him to go for FCP because it was industry standard, which premiere would have a hard job becoming because of FCP's hold and anyway, it's what the kids will find in the outside world when they get there in 3 or 4 years time wait but I also suggested he wait and see because the price of FCPX as opposed to FCStudio was looking very different. That was 5 days before FCPX release. Now it isn't going to be there for the students to find in the outside world in 3 or 4 years time, it will be Premiere and of course Avid. What a staggering waste, the only way they can save this is actually tell us when the first update is due for release and what they are going to do in that release, though they have a startlingly bad record for completing software, Color for example.

One also wonders about the fate of all other software, is Logic next in the firing line?

What a staggering waste, the only way they can save this is actually tell us when the first update is due for release and what they are going to do in that release, though they have a startlingly bad record for completing software, Color for example.

Color wasn't Apple's. It was bought from a company called Silicon Color and they even kept the entire design team. Color was quite finished and works incredibly well, still today. All my editors use it for pretty much ever project that goes out the door, usually around 450 per year.

Problem was it wasn't "Mac" enough. Folks actually had to take the time to learn it because it didn't operate like Mac software. Of course because it was designed for Linux originally. But once you learn it (takes about 2 hours) it's incredibly simple to use.

Of course you DO have to follow a set workflow and use approved media in and out of the software. Of course this is completely moot because the product is no more and as Patrick Inhofer pointed out in his incredible blog article, the new Color Board will create a slew of new "colorists" with bad habit and lack of basic knowledge of color in video.

I've already had more communication with both Avid and Adobe in two days than I had with Apple in 11 years. Both seem to realize not only is there a wealth of a market out there for them to tap into since it's very easy for FCP editors to transition to either product. There's also a lack for a very good color grading tool for editors. Davinci Resolve is there and fills a need for sure, but it's a very complex software and you have to dedicate time to learn it. We have one copy in our shop for myself and freelance colorists I bring in. But I want that Apple Color app for all my editors. Hopefully we'll be able to get both Adobe and Avid to come up with something along those lines.

Very exciting times actually. We're all having fun exploring software we haven't taken a serious look at in a very long time. You know what? We're finding out we've been missing out on a lot of good stuff by keeping the blinders on FCP. Our workflows are going to be much more efficient over the next few months than they are now and we barely have to change a thing. Hardware stays, storage systems stay, just change the software and modify our workflow a little bit to suit the new software.

Who knows, maybe in a few years FCPX will mature again into something useful for us and if it does, we could very well switch back. But then again, we may be super happy buying from software only companies that HAVE to listen to their customer base because they don't have consumer products to sell.

So Final Cut Pro X blows. I feared that would be the case. I'll just stick with the version I have then. Question, what about Compressor 4?? Or Motion 5?? Worth it? Or do they only work with Final Cut Blows?

You mean the response clearly not written by David Pogue? If you want to have some fun, go on over to Richard Harrington's website and read his blog breakdown of that response. Quite interesting.

Unfortunately David was put into a very bad position. he's a consumer electronics reviewer so first off, by having him review the product, Apple is acknowledging that this product is at least partially aimed at consumers who would read David's column. Secondly, his "response to editor's complaints" are hollow because he's not an editor. He does not earn a living sitting in the edit chair cutting day in day out. So he could not possibly know what he's talking about. He clearly got his information from Apple and simply repeated it.

Most of his responses only exacerbated the anger and frustration people were feeling, because they were either completely wrong or just plain insulting. To suggest that people should buy a $500 plugin to replace OMF functionality is a slap in the face, and shameless water-carrying.

Thx for that, I almost barfed. Pogue is such a pug. He seems to be just an extension of apple's marketing arm these days, and his columns on FCPx are ridiculous. I'm trying to install FCPx right now so I can write my next column on it, unfortunatly, most folks outside of Nepal will never read that review :) Cheers,http://www.jiggygaton.info

Re: Final Cut Pro X: What's Missing for Some Prosby John McCormack129621867

Well, I'll just say that I think Walter's comments were spot on and expressed what I think alot of people, myself included, are thinking. I came from an AVID background before switching to FCP and am also an Apple Certified Trainer for the program and let's just say there are also a bunch of "concerned" people voicing their opinions on that list.

That being said...I think it's time to inject a little humor into this debate;)

Yep Walter, thanks for your Inhofer's link, sounds like my third point where I could't give a constructive opinion on what I didn't explore: I "imagined" the fate of Shake could give an idea on what was to be expected...
In a rush at this point, I'll read the whole page later on, but looks like Inhofer concludes like "taking the chance is good, first steps are good, but simplification mess it up" :(
(I'll read it for sure, thanks again for the link)
Sam.

On the other hand, now that you've seen I'm no advocate, let's talk about your conclusions. Honestly, I think it's a bit premature to jump on alternative options, taking into account you've been working on FC for so many years. This my opinion, of course.

Apple said (and I'm hard to convince, trust me) they chose a new timing for updates, including more of them in shorter time.

At this point, Apple confirmed yesterday they would not give support for tapes anymore, and that EDL & OMF were to be dev. only by third party companies.... but also that multicam could show up and be back very soon, and new version of XML released sooner too...

So, regardless of every complaints I agree with, I can see they're relying on third parties (Fx Factory ok now for plugs, for ex.), as they let Roxio work for burning DVD on OSX I daresay (we'll, I'm aware I could have found a better comparison hehehehe)...

These are tiny reasons I think switching over to Premiere or Avid seems to be premature for me. "For me" because I can understand that pros cannot wait (some of them at least) and would have preferred Apple had REALLY listened to them before.

Therefore I scheduled to go on FCS2 for 2 years (at least one), checking sometimes what would be updated in X version. FCS2 is not dead and erased from every computers by now ;)

Sorry for my so loooonnnng posts, and keep on your good job here (and best wishes for your switch)

I've read the whole article, of course, and also every comments... As I feel very concerned, I'd like to add a few things.
(I'm french, sorry about writing mistakes here below)

1/ I totally agree with the main complaints. Since almost everything is said about "what's missing", I won't go on this way again, except to express my... how could I say...huge disappointment and surprise (surprise cos' I could have bet it could never happen) when I got told multicam disappears in this first version. Waaawww... I'm used to shoot a lot of different kind of spectacles and... well, forget it, multicam's not here now, let's talk about it further***. Another words for chapter markers and PSD layers too... man, 'looks like bad regression...

2/ As I said elsewhere, just a word on Compressor: it is to be able to do now what it should have been able to do since the beginning: use every cores of a computer, and better work with QMaster quickclusters. What software is supposed to do that if a multiformat compressor does not ? Sincerely, it's high time, this is the less to be done, just wanted to express it now cos' the whole suff's focused on FC.

3/ At this point, I cannot give a honest opinion about their implementing Color*** inside FC (or let's say the first try to), so I won't but I was quite sure they would, sincerely. Shake's fate gave the clue. And DVD SP too, of course, no one bet on it in this world of clouds and BD-less macs ;)

So now, my opinion about what's going on: Apple should have communicated a lot better about re-making a brand new software. I'm also fed up with comments I read a few days ago, trying to explain that GCD/64 bits/OpenCL were the reasons of this final look and feel and missing options. Of course not !!!
Come on, it took 10 years to come to the top, it was not "necessary" to meet iMovie when implementing recent technologies. I would have been f*****' pleased with a FC7 bis, or 8, which would include these technology trio + multicam with different codecs + layout bugs fixed + tiny stuff or even nothing more... It would have been ok, as it is ok when going from Leo to SL in the OS field.
No, it was a choice, meeting iMovie was a choice based on "Jobs said June so let's put it out in June". Waiting for November, a few months after Lion, would have been a lot better

Even though many editors don't use the XML feature for workflow setups, some companies have based their complete workflow on that.
A very simple example are subtitles, many of the big broadcasters and production houses used XML along with a low resolution files to send around in the world to have translations which easily could be imported into the main project, fine tuned and edited if needed. This is gone. There was also the option to export subtitles for DVD or BluRay authoring -- this is gone as well. But as said it's only a small part of the user base (from my business only 10.000 or so).

Another thing with XML workflow is creating daily shows. One of my customers creates 3 or more daily soaps per day, beside other features (so obviously a lot of seats and big company). These soaps are all multicam and double sound (finally often single sound as there is no cam sound). I developed a system for them to sync picture and sound and to create multiclips with a few clicks in 5 minutes for a whole day production (saving self-contained movies took a while longer). That was one of the reasons they switched to FCP a few years ago.
Now if they would update to FCP X all these things are gone. They can work with FCP 7 for a while, but it's dead end.
So what's their comment? You can imagine (and they had been invited by Apple for the February presentation).

I also worked as consultant for another pretty big broadcaster and they made the switch to FCP 3 years ago and did build an XML based workflow - what do they think?

Helena Ju - she left Apple last year - was chief of development for FCP XML for years. She was open for suggestions and professional needs. Most of the suggestions from pros (as long as they made sense) were implemented over they years. For FCP 7 even the whole stuff was re-written.
Now the big companies (though I don't know all) who based their workflows on that are in a mood which not sounds like "I love Apple" it's more like "I don't like Apple at all"

Apple made a bad move.

I know people in this business who say I give up my iPhone as well and will tell all my friends to do the same and convince those who don't own one not to buy. Same for any other Apple product. So they seem to be angry.

Premiere seems to be a good move, though there are some lacks, but they open - other then Apple.

I'm a former AVID editor who migrated to FCP, and now edit on it daily. An issue of big concern to me that I'm not hearing addressed is the ability to edit with the keyboard. I'm kind of a keyboard nut and try to use the mouse as little as possible. (Often hard in FCP's menu driven setup.) I've watched some demos and FCPX feels very mouse focused -- but that tends to be the nature of demos as you can then actually see what a person is doing. Consumer products tend to have a stronger mouse focus -- pro apps tend to give you the options to migrate to the keyboard for speed. Can you address this issue?

Somewhere in here, or was it Apple Discussions, is a link to a tut that shows the FCPx programmable keyboard and how FCP shortcuts are all there (well, for the function that's left.)

This just in from CoreMelt's director Roger Bolton:

Unfortunately, Apple choose not to give us any information about plugin support in FCP X prior to it's release today (22/6/11). We would like to support FCP X as quickly as possible, but until we have examined the work involved in detail we are unable to commit to any timescale for FCP X support. We apologize for this situation which was beyond our control and not at all ideal to both us and to you, our valued customers.

That looks bad for all the other plugins (Magic Bullet, Red Giant, Boris, etc.) We may have to wait a LONG while for plugs to get ported to FCPx...

Then, I just noticed in the Apple KBs that my own gotos for quick edits, a 2008 iMac and 2007 MBP, are no longer supported. I am downloading FCPX now to test, but that can't be true...those boxes are just over 3 years old and work with CS5.5 just grand. Seems like Apple is pissing off customers as well as suppliers left and right.

I read what you have to say and here is my point of view after playing with it intensely for about a day and a half. I agree that this is more of an FinalCut Express or iMovie Pro than a FinalCut Pro. I really think it is premature to switch over entirely to FCX or to abandon it either.

I use Avid, Premier, iMovie and FCS 7 depending on the project and what is needed. Now I can safely abandon iMove as this does everything that I have ever wanted iMovie to do. The interface is stellar and the advanced one-man-band style editing is way more fluid in FCX than either Avid, Premier or FCS 7. I will use FCS 7 for multicam and will probably edit a Feature in fall on FCSA 7 and using Final cut Server.

For editing News and docs Avid software of choice... though when FCX gets it's act together and allows sharing of files that will change drastically. For editing weddings and one-man-band style things FCX is THE bomb. Time will tell. I think it is an excellent first rendition and I think it is throwing the baby out with the bath water to say you will abandon Final cut Pro when FCS 7 is still so good and FCX is so promising.

I think it is an excellent first rendition and I think it is throwing the baby out with the bath water to say you will abandon Final cut Pro when FCS 7 is still so good and FCX is so promising.

As I've said previously, we've been planning to move away from FCP 7 for about 6 months now. It's two years old and very VERY inefficient with the digital formats that are out there today. An example I've noted is three days for one computer to convert 24 hours of GoPro footage for a current documentary before I could start to edit with it. VERY inefficient.

So I was already planning to move away from FCP 7 and after seeing the sneak peek in Las Vegas my next step was to visit the Adobe and Avid booths to see what they were doing and was pleasantly surprised.

Once we saw the actual public version of Final Cut Pro 10 it was clear that our wish for more efficiency was not there and in fact too many features had simply been abandoned. Folks are saying that "well Apple is going to add features back in as it matures" and that's fine. But which features? And how long? It took over 8 years of development to get to Final Cut Pro 7. I'm simply not going to wait for Apple to "catch up" to Final Cut Pro 7 when there are other tools out there.

Switching to Adobe Premiere is as simple as clicking on the Premiere icon. Same hardware, same storage, same interoperability with other software including Apple Color. So why would I "wait" for Apple to catch up when there are other tools already out there.

Adobe and Avid surpassed Apple last year and even more so this year at NAB so I guess Apple felt pressured to revolutionize the editing world, when all we needed was the next step forward.

So we move on. If Apple has something we can use in a few years, we might come back, and that includes the ability to completely open up an existing project from 4 to 6 years ago. My editors are actually very excited about this because it means more efficiency and they don't have to throw away the workflow they've developed over the years. Both Premiere and Avid work similarly to FCP 7 so it'll be an easy switch.

Yes Walter I agree, I think the big winner is Adobe. You have to give them credit, they have been one of the industry players & stayers for as long as I can remember. After Effects is a powerful beast & given its acceptance by the industry a great marketing tool for those looking around for options. I have no idea how their system operates but I am already looking into it. Avid with it's new release of software, a maybe at best, given present perceived limitations. They will need to be meek, mild & totally accepting of 3rd party plug ins & files to get FCP users to crossover. However, I can easily see the big 2 will no longer be FCP or Avid, but now Adobe & Avid.

One thing I'm noticing in all the posts is that FCP is NOW being spoken of in a past tense , pretty amazing how things can change in a few days. I am staggered that "Color" no longer exists, that was & is, one powerful piece of software that crucified a lot of other grading systems. I'm scratching to think of a replacement. Is Adobe's as powerful, do they have one? In the meantime when I go to bed every night I'm putting my FCP 7 licence under my pillow for safe keeping.

I wonder what the HD file recorders makers, ala Aja, Cindeck, Convergent Design, Atmos, Arri will make of all this in a few months time. A shift in NLE dominance could push away from ProRes into other codecs.

If I know AJA like I do, they will be able to record to any codec on their recorders. And Adobe Premiere supports ProRes playback so really no reason to even abandon that workflow going to their software.

As I make TV commercials for a living I know something about demographics & mass markets. I was always wondering how Apple, a mass a market powerhouse could justify supporting a "niche" product like FCP 7. Well I guess we now have the answer. But maybe that's a good thing, because who wants a conglomerate, now more profitable than Microsoft, making software for creative applications. Just another step in the evolution of a company once priding itself on "being on the outer" to a corporate behemoth.

In regards to posts talking about jumping to Avid as an alternative, please remember this company displayed the exact same arrogance 10 years we now see Apple displaying today. Seriously an editing package in the 21st century that requires standardisation of file formats for acceptance into its software in a fluid multi-format 21st century enviroment . Just more Avid arrogance waiting to bloom again.

Isn't it funny how Avid is now the "good guy" and Apple is the "bad guy." See the thing is, Avid actually learned from their mistakes as they watched Apple swallow up their market share. They are very much a changed company and i think with the release of MC6 you'll see even more openness.

You know whose sitting pretty with all of this? Adobe. I talked more about Adobe Premiere with broadcasters and post facilities and editor than I have ever talked about in my life. Especially after I posted my video blog on Vimeo showing how ridiculously easy it is to open an FCP project in Premiere CS5. Something you will never be able to do with FCP 10.

Yeah I also think that Adobe is grinning at the sideline. FCS and CS are after all quite similar . Avid will benefit aswell but I do think the bulk of FCS users who jump ship will probably go the Adobe way. Avid is and will remain more of a niche player but I don't think it's a bad thing. Mediacomposer is an editing software that excells in editing. Just like ProTools or Resolve or Flame excell in their league. I don't need software that does everything, but I certainly understand some people do. But as a freelancer I'll have to look into Première one of these days, because I'm sure there will be a day I'll need to work on. I'm starting to feel like a colorgrader who needs to be able to work on 10 different systems :-)

Why do you accuse Avid of becoming arrogant in the years to come ? They 're so different than 10 years ago, give them some slack...

I think that the dominant player is the one that at one point feels overconfident and starts to act likewise. It happened to Avid, it happens to Apple now and I wouldn't be surprised if it would happen to Adobe in the years to come. But in the end it doens't matter, this keeps the competition and innovation going. I'm still editing on Avid (and FCP and Lightworks) but Avid being forced to rethink its philosophy made it a better company with better products. Hopefully Apple reacts in the same way but since it's not an ordinary company I'm not sure this will happen.

I had an epiphany about three weeks ago that FCP-X was going to go down as "iMovie Pro". So I took up Avid's MC 5.5 upgrade promotion. So I now have that and Premiere CS 5.5. I'm with Walter, I'm moving on. Walter's summation is spot on!

Change is a part of life, when the tool no longer works, move on. Hard to believe Apple completely missed it on this one, but they did. No use sticking around to see if / when they fix it. Thanks to their 3rd party support, my facility is ready to go with Premiere.

May I recommend that you give Avid DS a try? It is not only a great compositor. It's an awesome editor. I speak from a background of GVG editing, to Avid MC, to Avid DS. I still use Avid MC as well, and love it, but it is a shame DS is overlooked as an editor.

Thanks for this review, Walter. It's helped a lot. I don't believe I'm overreacting by saying that Apple's behavior regarding FCP/X (and other pro gear and applications) has eliminated FCX from the list of NLE's I'll recommend going forward. Long-term, it's a liability, as Apple has demonstrated a lack of commitment to the product's development for professional use. FCX right now is a lame duck. And that could change or it might not, but I'm not going to gamble other peoples' money on it.

As a sys admin, I too have been holding out on decisions about our roster of NLE's (and support contract renewals) until FCX finally released. Now, what am I supposed to say? Apple's record with FCP/X doesn't look good at all, and its plans are opaque to say the least. Even though it's been cheap to purchase, works with several brands of I/O gear, and is a defacto standard of the industry, it's downright impossible to overlook the shortcomings anymore. Apple might want me to be patient, wait for updates, add-ons, and plugins, but there are decisions to make (and projects to share between editors) now. When someone comes asking for how to cut together a youtube video, I'll know where to point them.

Like Bob says, we have the option of waiting for better things from Apple. But depending on Apple's discretion as it hooks untold millions of consumers on its consumer products is a risk I just wouldn't take now. We'll likely stay with Avid, and setup a rig with a couple of other up-and-coming NLE's to see who has the tools we need. And do this all over again in a couple years! Gotta stay flexible.

I find it amusing just how much damage control they are trying to do today. I think they figured there would be a little blowback on it, but not the firestorm and certainly nothing that Larry Jordan wouldn't be able to tamp down at the SuperMeet.

Alas, the complete killer in the entire mess is the lack of Project Support. We will refer back to projects from 4 to 5 years ago because of the nature of our documentary work. I guess at Apple once they complete a project they never look back.

With the unveiling of "the cloud", the increased use of iPads and now the incredible simplification of the FCP interface, perhaps apple's goal is to eventually get us to have all our footage on the cloud while manipulating it from our iPads with an FCPX app. Just a theory. Either way, this version does appear to lack a professional sensibility.

Don't dismiss the latest incarnation of Media 100 as an option, Walt. If you haven't seen it since the "$30,000" days you're in for a pleasant surprise. It also WILL accept your existing FCP shows via XML transfer and works with your existing AJA I/O boxes. Media 100 Suite 2, like all Boris products, has a free 14 day trial during which it is fully functional.

""Living in their insular world in Cupertino they have come up with what they think a professional editor requires to get the job done.""

Don't you get it? They NEVER thought of what the 'Pro user required' because they are NOT interested in that market anymore!!!!
They want FCPX a product for the masses. Business wise a brilliant step, only thing is they forgot to say sorry to all pro users....

I was about to buy Avid MC via the promotion but I figured I'd wait to see what happened with the new FCP. Bad move on my part.

The lack of support for any other versions of FCP tells me that Apple is trying to get rid of all it's former pro customers without saying "F@#$ Off", but it feel like exactly that. No sweat. The freedom from Apples pricey hardware will be nice. FCP was the only program that I used on a Mac that I can't use on PC :)

Walter, I hope Premiere can fill the gap well for the industry. I have always loved After Effects and would love to be able to use Adobe's products as a suite. Assuming it is up to the task, which I can't vouch for, I hope people migrate to it in mass.

Walter, a great summary. The one thing i agree with you most on is that Apple should just come clean. They say that they are not abandoning the pro market, but this release shows that they are. Instead of making us guess all the time and playing the usual Apple games, they need to come clean and tell us what they are going to do and what their aims for the software are.

As you said in your article it is as if Apple have simply designed what THEY think is a pro package. Stupidly I am led to believe that the guy behind FCPX is the guy who designed the revamped iMovie, who in turn is the same guy who came up with the original FCP!

I simply do not understand how a company with the resources of Apple could make such a disaster of this.

"If they had really consulted "pros" in a systematic way pre-release, a lot of complaints made above would surely have surfaced."

Peter, I totally agree about the software itself. The thing that troubles me, is in March or April 2010 I went to a small panel of AICE editors, mainly doing TV Commercial work, who met with 3 reps from Apple at their headquarters in New York. These reps included Luke Tristram, Product Manager of Final Cut Server and Compressor and Steve Bayes Product Manager of Final Cut Pro. At this meeting which was a mix of Avid Editors who also use Final Cut from time to time and straight up Final Cut Editors, a lot of real issues with FCP 7 were brought to the table. I myself came with a typed list of things that were buggy, didn't work properly or could be improved, and handed it to one of the reps for further inspection at the end of the meeting. Things like a real masking tool instead of a 4 or 8 point garbage matte (Avid users complained Avid has had this for years) came up, FCPX now seems to only have a 4 point garbage matte.
Things like how FCP deals with EDLs where Cinema tools needs to be used to convert 29.97 to 23.98, FCPX doesn't take EDLs or even XMLs. Things like bugs in Color and a poor history state in color, FCPX killed color. Things like gamma shifts between codecs and sources, FCPX is now fully color managed, odd that I brought in a clip from an SLR, let FCPX transcode, and there was still a shift in the reds (I never trusted Compressor to this task before for the same reason, but always had a perfect encode through After Effects). Things like RED support, FCPX has none.

My point being, they did meet with some pros prior to building FCPX, they just didn't listen or care about the things they said.

The only time I ever heard from Steve Bayes was when he would write to me to tell me how my latest article was wrong.

Then either myself or an engineer would send a detailed reply back to him and we never heard from him again. Until the NEXT thing that I said was wrong..... :)

They honestly didn't listen to what pros were saying, or they didn't talk to enough pros, or they just felt like they had a good thing going with iMovie so why not mimic that and everyone who uses iMovie can easily transition to the "pro version."

Walter - this is probably the best critique I've seen on FCP-X. And from where I sit, dead on target. My own experience with Premiere was so toxic that I would never go back, but now that Avid has finally moved to software-only, perhaps I'll return from whence I came and install the latest version of Media Composter.

For a company as savvy in marketing as Apple, this release is nothing short of complete fumble. If they set out to whizz off their installed base, they couldn't have done a better job.

BTW, even Larry Jordan is tempering his enthusiasm. His just-released training material says a lot if you read between the lines. And it's been interesting to see other Apple stalwarts (e.g. Torrey Loomis, Richard Harrington) unloading on Apple as well. I hope someone in Cupertino is listening...

This is not about loyalty. This is a business not a hobby. Adobe has had a 64-bit solution out for months that was better than their previous 32-bit version. Adobe did not go backwards. Avid will have a 64-bit in December with version 6. We’ll see how far backwards they go. I bet not.

I for one see a clearer path with a company that has and does cater primarily to professionals. I have always been insecure with Apple's professional application track record. Their success with iPhone, iPad , iPod and other broad-base consumer-driven products makes me wonder why it took them so long to remove themselves from this narrow, professional niche. FCP was their only so-called professional application. It has to be the lowest income to expense product in their portfolio. That would put FCP on the chopping block for sure.

The thing I am having trouble with is that Apple is a company that understands marketing pretty well. Given that assumption, it just baffles me while they would roll out the program in the way that they have. If they had really consulted "pros" in a systematic way pre-release, a lot of complaints made above would surely have surfaced. And yet they decided to go ahead -- for reasons, I bet, that have little to do with the app itself. Would it not make sense to say out loud this is the first step in a long development road and that provide a clearer roadmap. Yanking FCP 7.0/FCS 3 without explanation surely did not send the right message.

(As an aside, I wonder if the reason they pulled 7 is they didn't want the new product competing directly with the new one.)

It smacks of internal corporate politics, and a certain hubris, and a worrying lack of thinking important issues trough. Frankly, it makes me wonder about the consequences of Steve Job's illness.

I'd bet that somewhere in a bar in Cupertino there's a bunch of Apple employees saying "we told them, but they wouldn't listen."

Looking at the FCP marketing page, what's striking is the lack of focus of the message on the needs of ANY group of users. The claims are basically four:

1) FCP makes editing "faster, more fluid, and more flexible than ever before."

4) FCP "is a single application for the entire post-production workflow." (THE workflow? Aren't there many?)

What's striking is that these are fairly broad, vague statements even by marketing standards, and suggest to me this is a product that Apple's marketing team does not know how to sell. That could be because the whole redevelopment effort has been poorly focused and/or the subject of significant internal debate and/or apathy. This is the best case Apple could make for a "revolution"? Give me a break.

What missing is marketing that one used to see for FCP -- the video of the BBC executive saying how critical the product would be to his organization's future and how its features were not available on other products etc. The white papers on the feature and innovations etc.

Interestingly, as of this morning, if one goes to http://www.apple.com/pro , the pro video app was still being represented by a photo of a FCS 3 box.

I think what happens now was to be expected. I always believed that - as a pro or highend user - you just can't rely on a company for whom postproduction isn't its core business. For me, Apple's hardware is perfect but I wouldn't dream of building my studio around their software. Apple basically sells computers and phones, it isn't a company specialized in postproduction like Avid, Adobe, Quantel, Discreet (Autodesk) etc. And I prefer to buy my tools from the experts because I know they need me as much as I need them.

Honestly, if Avid or Adobe would pull a stunt like this, they would be bankrupt in a year. Imagine Adobe releasing a 'revolutionary' new Photoshop with half the features and without the ability to read PSD files because they assume nobody needs those anymore. The fact that they pull FCS3 the same time they release a crippled FCPX says enough for me. Apple might be good in revolutionizing hardware and have excellent programmers, but all this leads me to believe that they know nothing about our industry. Makes sense, if I think about Steve Jobs, I don't exactly think about postproduction...

I keep wanting to hear that Jobs is coming out from backstage to say "One more thing... April Fool's! This was the FCPX For Dummies version.... (holds up package)... y'all pros get this shiny slick "does everything FCP7 did but at 64bit speeds" version. Yukyuk. Gotcha."

I started editing on 2" quad tape. Used more editors than I got fingers (maybe toes). I LOVE FCP7.

Final cut has never been and will never be a professional editing system. You folks have been lucky to rise from being b-class editor, doing good enough dv productions, to real editor (the same thing will happen with the kid in the basement using Final Cut X). If you build a business model around the low-cost of Final Cut back in the days and used the windows of opportunity given by of Avid’s lack of vision, then you drink your own poisoned wine ! This trend push many Avid post-house to bankruptcy by cutting the price, yeah you know who you are… Apple is doing the same thing to itself that it as done with Avid 10 year’s ago. Never put yourself into a place, where your destiny is the hand of major corporation decision even if it’s in the hand of the most revolutionary of them. ( you know what the word revolution mean, right ?) Build upon talent, be gear agnostic… Stop whining and adapt for god’s sake.

Final cut has never been and will never be a professional editing system

That's a completely false statement, I'm sorry. Final Cut Pro has been a very solid professional video editing system for years. If not I could not have grown my business nor delivered national network broadcast shows. Nor would it have grown to being the de-facto editing standard across the industry.

Final Cut Pro X is a major step backwards in that tradition, but up until Final Cut Pro 7.0.3, it was and remains a very professional video editing application.

Very depressing reading Walter but I agree 100%, I will press on with 7 for Legacy projects and will be moving to Premiere Pro for all new work, like you I've had the software for a while and it's not a bad replacement.

And I am quite shocked at how inaccurate some of his statements are. For example it is possible to share projects with other editors. And to be honest...in FCP it wasn´t working as advertised either. Color Renders always ended up in the wrong directory on other drives. Color was in fact costing hours and hours with its half-finished XML-support. So I won´t miss that collaboration functionality of FCP Studio.

There are huge holes in FCP-X. I agree there, but some of the bashing here seems like it is by people who sat down, fired it up, gave it a few minutes, didn´t find their OLD workflow and dissed it.
I had 6 different NLEs before. May favourite was Speed Razor. Then went to FAST/Liquid, which was great. Then Edius, which has its strengths and weaknesses. Then FCP6 and 7.

FCP-X is not any of them. And every time I jumped to a new one it took a complete overhaul of my workflow. There is only one thing that stays: you need to practice the new tool. nd that takes weeks and in this case it will take a few updates. Multicam...a must, XML-import of FCP7....a must, drivers for Matrox, AJA etc....a must.
But the potential of FCP-X is enormous. I edited a roughcut with it and was very very much faster than on FCP. I had to ingest via FCP7, but once the XDCam-422HD material was in ProRes FCP-X never looked back....

If Apple were to turn around today and say "Free FC Studio for everybody!" I would not take it. They can always reverse decision at any time. That's how little trust I have in that company right now. It's nothing against the Pro Apps team, it's the overall copmany.

Apple is rightfully a consumer company now with iEverything just killing the competition.

If Apple were to sell off the entire Studio Suite (like they should have done years ago) to the right company, THAT's when I would re-consider the decision. I think a company like The Foundry would be a great fit for the tool set.

Apple simple does not need the very small professional post production market to survive. In fact they will do much better without it especially with the tool they've released. Even if Apple "gets it right in two years" like I'm reading a lot of people say online, I'm not sure I'll even go back. Never say never, but time will tell. This is not the time for me to trust Apple.

Speaking of Trust, I never realized just how many products Apple has killed off for Pros until my good buddy Marco Solario wrote this great blog yesterday.

[walter biscardi]"Apple simple does not need the very small professional post production market to survive. In fact they will do much better without it especially with the tool they've released."
That's the only truth, and, like it or not, we must accept it.
From FCs launch (2000) to the iPhone (2007), things have radically changed and I understand that Apple is taking the best decision for Apple.
Any way Apple should take the "pro" out of the name; just for respect to the people that made possible for Apple to survive and reach the present glory.
Without FCS, Apple wouldn't have made it to the iPhone.
rafael

Another sobering day has now passed in the post-launch trauma week. It occurred to me that us end-users are a little like a bunch of kids that all love the same toy. Now the toy has been ruined and we're all distraught, running around for someone to hold us and comfort us, whether that'll be Avid, Adobe, Autodesk or someone else.

Having given Apple all this time, I think I'm ready to give them a little more to polish this product and make things right.

I work on online, CGI and color grading for a lot of projects, and pretty much all of my clients use FCP themselves. I'm not in a position to switch anywhere fast - I'll have to go with to flow, but I hope it's not in a hurry.

Patience is absolutely a virtue or I would have left the platform two years ago. In fact despite the fact that I all but made up my mind to switch after the NAB Presentation in April, I waited for the public release before making any final decision.

So I've been patient and will make the switch now, just keep an eye on what Apple does over the next few years. If it works for you, then I would absolutely not make any changes and keep going with the tool.

It makes me feel a little better knowing that you've thought about this for a long time. I'm sure some people may be rushing into a decision to move away from FCP as soon as they can and might be spending money they don't need to.

In terms of losing Color as a grading tool - have you decided what to do? I'm thinking about going down the DaVinci Resolve road myself.

Seems hasty to me to spend a lot of money now when you have time to wait it out a bit. If you have to budget, like most professional facilities do, then perhaps plan on a worst case to cover your bases.

However, put aside your complaints and wishes about what it should have done out of the box for a minute. Then drop some media in the timeline and then drop some effects on that media along with some color presets. Apply some geometry shifts... What you will see is very impressive. It does stuff that brought 7 to its knees. That is the kind of power that enables editors to try out very different creative things without the penalty of a render or choked unlimited RT playback.

When I look at it that way, what I see is the foundation of NLE for the next 10 years.

From everything I've heard so far, usability of X for a bigger editorial facility (with Xsan or shared storage and project "sharing") is not that far away - read not 2 years. And if it the timeline is significantly less than two years, then it is best to keep your wallet in your pocket for a minute and just see what happens.

Sorry to reply to this so late after your original post, but I'm getting tired of hearing people who simply read your review (and other reviews) or listen to your podcast, (without even seeing the product!) and come to tell me that we can't ever consider going to FCP X.

Seems hasty to me to spend a lot of money now when you have time to wait it out a bit. If you have to budget, like most professional facilities do, then perhaps plan on a worst case to cover your bases.

What money exactly am I spending? We already own the Production Premium CS 5 package for every edit suite as it's cheaper to purchase that then Photoshop, AE and Illustrator as individual items. So Premiere Pro is already on all our systems.

Premiere Pro supports our entire infrastructure particularly now with the new AJA Kona drivers and Plug-ins

My only cost will be the CS 5.5 updates which are quite miniscule.

Then drop some media in the timeline and then drop some effects on that media along with some color presets. Apply some geometry shifts... What you will see is very impressive. It does stuff that brought 7 to its knees.

You mean like Adobe CS 5.5 does, only while maintaining our original workflow AND the ability to open our projects from the past 10 years? If I just need an application to drop color presets on or maybe do some rotation and scale only, well then FCP X is quite impressive.

However I need an efficient storytelling tool that also allows me to access all of my clients projects from years past. Adobe Premiere Pro CS 5.5 runs rings around Final Cut Pro 7 as I'm discovering. And as I have stated in multiple replies to this very thread we have been planning the move away from Final Cut Pro 7 for at least 6 months. I was VERY underwhelmed by the Apple presentation in April and the direction they were going. I waited until the public release of FCP X to make the final decision. There are too many third parties things that will have to line up to make this product viable and based on Apple's track record with the original Final Cut Pro, I would expect it to be years before I could even consider it as a viable tool for our facility and workflow.

So I have two choices.

One - Wait and hope that Apple adds what I will require sometime in the near future (whatever Apple defines as the near future) while continuing to use an outdated software that is very inefficient with digital formats, yet allows me to maintain the same workflow we've had for 10 years.

Two - Move to Adobe Premiere Pro or Avid which both work much more efficiently with digital formats and much more efficiently overall while allowing me to maintain almost exactly the same workflow we've had for 10 years with some tweaks.

I've chosen Number Two and if Final Cut Pro ever becomes viable for us in the future, well then we can always switch back to it right? Unless of course Steve Jobs institutes the "Nobody who uses anything but Final Cut Pro in 2011 will be allowed to ever use it in the Future" rule. I certainly wouldn't put it past him, but I don't expect to see that happen.

But you will certainly see Final Cut Pro X on the iPad by 2012, I'd almost guarantee that.

You keep saying the choice is premiere or avid. Yeah, we all have CS5, and AJA cards etc. Avid Media Composer on the other hand (and plugins like sapphire for avid crossgrade) will take significant cash for a facility.

The new premiere render engine is exciting if you have the right gfx card in all of your computers. If it works for you, great. Perhaps it could work for us as well.

The point is that the choice doesn't need to be immediate. In my position, I'm looking at a staff of 30 some people (editors, assistants, producers, etc) and figuring that I have to train them on something new at some point in the next year. There are several diverse workflows here that would have to get adapted to a different NLE. There is media organization on the san and automations to migrate that media off of the san. All of that takes time and money to change. So just switching to premiere is by no means free. Especially when a large percent of the younger folk here have ONLY used FCP in there education and profession. From that standpoint, I do not see X as "cheap" either. But I don't want to switch twice, and I have time to make that decision.

It's not as if FCP 7 just died and I can never open it again. It's going to work fine for the foreseeable future. There are solutions as easy as maintaining a disk image with FCP 7 to your problem of backwards compatibility and opening old projects from years ago. And that is if nobody ever does anything to get XML in and out of X.

It sounds to me more like you are making a decision between 7 and premiere and that you are kicking yourself for not making that jump earlier. If you honestly think premiere is better for you, then go for it. I've never felt that way personally when comparing the aging FCP 7 to Premiere. But that's my personal view.

From my standpoint, the upside of X has much more promise and potential, from creativity to productivity. A switch to Premiere or Avid could be a solid one, but it would only be a switch to match the capabilities we currently have for the most part. What I see in X is the potential to trump those capabilities and that is what excites me.

Would I switch today? Obviously not. Will I switch tomorrow? No. Will I switch over in 6 months? It's very possible that some workflows could be much better off in X by then. Do I need to make that decision today? No - FCS3 is working just fine in the meantime.

[Keith Koby]"You keep saying the choice is premiere or avid. Yeah, we all have CS5, and AJA cards etc. Avid Media Composer on the other hand (and plugins like sapphire for avid crossgrade) will take significant cash for a facility."

No, I'm not saying that's the only choice. In fact we also have Autodesk Smoke in the shop and of course a lot of folks love Sony Vegas too. That's the beauty of NLE systems today, we have a lot to choose from.

[Keith Koby]"It sounds to me more like you are making a decision between 7 and premiere and that you are kicking yourself for not making that jump earlier. If you honestly think premiere is better for you, then go for it. I've never felt that way personally when comparing the aging FCP 7 to Premiere. But that's my personal view."

I've never felt that way until now with CS 5 and 5.5. Even the Adobe reps I speak to tell me that the product has finally matured to the point where it's a serious FCP / Avid replacement.

But as I've been saying, you have to do what's right for your situation. In my situation, spending 3 days or more converting GoPro footage to edit into documentaries and broadcast shows is just getting to be a drag and cutting into our efficiency. I was hoping FCP X would be an answer to that, but it's not. The lack of legacy project support is the absolute killer.

So in my situation, we need more efficiency to stop all the log and transfer and conversions so we can just start editing. And my editors and freelancers are all excited about the move to either Adobe or Premiere for the primary edit workstations. In your case, if it works to hold tight, then that's what you do. Eventually you'll make the decision that makes the right choice for you and your company.

Just wanted to say a thank you to everyone who has commented. As with anything else in the creative world, there is no "right answer" to Final Cut Pro X. In my case, it doesn't work for our workflow. And as I've said many MANY times here on the Cow, if a tool doesn't work for you, then find a tool that does.

Back in 2000 / 2001 Media 100 was no longer working for me and I was at a point where a partnership had just split up. So it was a clean break point for me and I decided to try this new thing Final Cut Pro. It worked out quite well for me for 11 years.

Now it's time for me to move on, but I do have the additional consideration of about 1000 Final Cut Pro projects that I really do need to make sure I can access. Which is ironic because it's easier to move those projects into Avid and Premiere than it is to move into FCP X.

I will say the absolute BIGGEST disappointment for me with this new release is the destruction of Silicon Color "Final Touch" which became Apple Color which is now a series of dots in Final Cut Pro X. That was the best color correction software ever developed for the Mac. But because it was "too hard" and not "Mac like" most folks couldn't be bothered. I really enjoyed showing folks just how freakin' easy it was to use this color correction tool.

Now Apple has made it truly "Mac like" where you don't even have to know what you're doing, just click some presets, auto balance, auto match and you're done. No need to learn anything.

If there's one thing I wish Apple had done right, it would have been to sell off Color to a third party developer. In fact I wish they would sell off the final Studio package to a third party developer and let them run with it. My vote would be The Foundry.

But they won't so we move on. As I mentioned in a couple of replies and on my Twitter feed, I'll be blogging about our transition. Maybe it will be helpful to others.

Again, I thank you all for your comments and I wish all of you the very best of luck as you move forward.

Walter,
I 100% agree with you. As I mentioned earlier to someone on the forum, I would like to quote a friend of mine. May be you could share your thoughts on this one?

"FCP has code or patents that is licensed for it's multi-cam edit feature, and they are trying to "re-code" these costly dependencies out, as they move to 64-bit, OpenCL based sourcecode. They're also probably using the 80-20 rule; release the product missing 20% of the features, to make 80% of the people happy now."

It is really weird: I feel like abandoning a ship I really liked sailing on and on the other hand I feel I should wait a little longer and see what comes around the corner. If apple spent millions of dollars on developing a new app with plenty of time to do so where are the necessary tools we became fond of...?

It is really weird: I feel like abandoning a ship I really liked sailing on and on the other hand I feel I should wait a little longer and see what comes around the corner. If apple spent millions of dollars on developing a new app with plenty of time to do so where are the necessary tools we became fond of...?

Here's the thing, I've waited two years for Apple to release "the next big thing." What they released a couple of days ago, in it's present form, is a whopping failure for my workflow.

Fortunately because Apple always relied on third party vendors to truly make FCP a professional tool, my entire infrastructure will work with other software tools out there. So I don't really feel the need to "wait to see what Apple does next." Do you have any idea when Apple will release major updates to the software or what those updates will be? Nope, neither do I.

So I will start migrating my facility to another platform and in the meantime, keep an eye on what Apple is doing. If in a year, two years, three years, whatever, Apple has once again created a tool that works with our workflow, we can always switch back.

FCP 7, Adobe Premiere and Avid all pretty much work the same way. Buttons are in a different place and the terminology is different, but they're all essentially the same. So switching right now to Avid or Adobe is no big deal, it'll be an easy switch. Switching to FCP X is not an option right now and all I can go on is what Apple has out RIGHT NOW.

I simply will not play the game anymore of "well you KNOW Apple is gonna put THIS back in and THAT will be surely be out SOON and THEN they'll make sure we have THAT thing back SOON." What is this and that and when exactly is soon? I'm tired of the games.

So while Apple figures what this, that and the other thing is and what date and time is soon, we'll move on to something that will make our lives much more efficient than the current version of FCP 7.

Media 100 will open FCP projects via XML.Do it all the time. Also bounce to Premiere CS5 as need arises via XML. But I really like Media 100 for finish. Full Red support now too. AJA all the way. Free 14 day trial.

I dont make my living editing video, but I've edited a lot of video, have worked in still photo and web design mostly, have gotten to be strong on the audio side, with Ableton Live.

I was just using Soundtrack Pro today, and parts of it are great, but exporting is a kludge. File mgmt in FCP was weird already, and in FCPX, sounds heinous.
Premiere CS4 is far worse, though. Maybe 5.5 is better.

You would think after 20 years and billions of consumer dollars and coding sweat, these companies could deliver the basics in the simplest ways possible, with lots of frills on the side, but apparently not.

All I can say is that 3D and digital audio have rocketed ahead to 9-10s, photo manipulation (in Pshop) is about a 7, motion graphics is about an 8, and video is about a 3. I edited on decks 20 years ago. It wasn't that complex. It was about taste, and about being a good shooter in the first place. For movies, fine, it's art, but for functional pieces, it's as much about the software getting out of the way as anything.

I'm looking to Avid, and maybe that means I wont be looking at a Mac Pro. After 20 years, I am seriously looking back at PCs, partly because Apple's hardware is overpriced, and its attitude is nuts. Wanna check out Vegas, see if it does the basics as well as it seems.

Adobe lied and broke what worked with CS4. Maybe it got better, but the boards lead me to think otherwise, and I don't want to repeat the experience of a company that treats its employees and officers above its customers, and both Apple and Adobe have become those companies.

I cant believe there's no upgrade path to FCPX, and it seems like they're just saying buh bye. I guess we'll hear soon enough, although the fact that people are wondering "is that all there is? may I have some more gruel, sir?" is a marketing megafailure already.

You would think a company with this much cash would build the greatest pro software in the world sort of like a film studio financing academy award winners. The rep is good for the bottom line. Mobile devices are fleeting. iTunes is horrible. The OS is good but bloating, and breaking things that work, too. Without pro apps, what is the pro hardware for exactly? Are we all headed into the iCloud and not coming out?

This is a bad view into a darling company that I thought had more wisdom. Short APPL now.

Great writeup (and i've read a bunch) on new FCPx. This article was where I see first mentioned the PSD layer limitation. Wow, what an oversight. That's pretty much a showstopper for me...but how can that be true? Is it that way in Motion as well?!? How the heck would you workflow animations then, without using one PSD with all the layers (either turned on or off)...wtf? Cheers,
Jigs

When randy ubillos chief architect of video applications at Apple was given the task to update/re-write FCP, I had a good idea this is what we would get. It's obvious that Ubillos doesn't understand "Professional" editing (Editing for a living). Hopefully Ubillos will read the reviews and listen to their pro editors/clients. Isn't that where Avid went bad? And now they listen. We'll have to see what Avid brings to the table with their 64bit release.

Spot on Walter. We have four FCP 7 Stations connected to an Apple Xsan of some 90 TB and we have watched Apple systematically dismantle all these tools since we bought it 4 years ago.
Now we all expect change, nothing stays the same. But when you invest in a product like this you invest in a philosophy and that used to be an open approach from Apple. Now it seems they are moving the goal posts and they are either getting some bad advice regarding the professional market or the are not considering it at all.

I have always felt exposed to risk when dealing with Apple because unlike real hardware suppliers they never tell you what they are doing. There is no roadmap which means they can change direction on a whim and they don't need to consider or apologize for their actions. They can never be held accountable for their actions which would be the behavior of a psychopath were they a person.

Lets examine some recent history they buy Shake (a the world class compositing package) strip what they need for FCP and Kill the product 2 years later and sack the development team. They replace shake with the idiot proof and average Motion tool
They buy Final touch($25k product) finish the product and bundle it with FCP S2 (best move by far) they drop the color dev team 18 months ago not before they pillage from it to add a half baked color tool to iMovie X (FCP X).
They get rid of there Xraid drive and job that out to Promise 2 years later they stop making Xserve units and get rid of a load of tech staff who do their support and installation of Xsan. No further development on Xsan which will now be bundled with lion. This pattern of behavior does not bode well if you have modeled parts of you business on there professional products. What about BBC natural history unit who have Xsan installations and loads of FCP suites. The broadcasters who have put Finalcut Server in, how are they exposed. Are we to believe that they have been dismissed by Apple as we appear to have been. Where are their voices in this debate or have they been briefed on the master plan in order to placate them.

I don't no where I stand on this because I don't think we have all the information.
But consider this, it has been an uncharacteristically low key launch for Apple.
This could mean that they were under pressure to launch something to keep the users happy rather than do nothing, even if it meant they were not ready.
Or they really are taking us in a direction we do not want to go. I am having difficulty in believing that their major broadcast clients do not have an inside track on what the plan is. Who will AJA, Black-magic and many other vendors peddle there products to?
So many products have XML & Edl implementation and will depend on this function to move projects between competing systems. FCP X offers no scope for collaboration with other artists using other toolsets. This is either very arrogant or spectacularly stupid or could it be that they are just not done yet.

Which ever way you look at it unless Apple comes clean to to Pro market they are going to sell less gear it that space (maybe they want out of the workstation business as well). Apple need to talk to us if indeed there is a plan we should know so we can plan our lives around it or without it.

I you Apple profess to know what your users want how is it that you have missed the mark by a country mile. You don't tell us what you are doing and serve up what you want. You trade on the loyalty of your customers but you don't invite them in. You are not to big to fail, remember it is the customer who put you where you are and its the customer who can take you down.
Some should get fired for this its happened before Steve.

I still can't quite understand why Apple took a terrific "Halo" product like Final Cut Pro, and trashed it.

This is the software that Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter used to edit last years' Academy Award winning film, "The Social Network"! That's not likely to happen again in the near or distant future if Final Cut Pro-X remains on it's current direction!

I understand that Apple is a company that cares most about serving the greatest number of people with every one of their product offerings, but I feel they really missed the point of FCP7 , and what it represents. In such a high profile industry as Hollywood, there is an intangible message that goes with the "associations" of cool Apple products being used by cool film makers.

The king is dead, long live the king!

But on the bright side is their is likely to be a ton of some "damn fine" birthday party videos!

I'm a one man shop but I have to agree with Walter. FCPX in its current form is more of a toy. I'm hoping apple gets up to speed but they're obviously not in touch with the pro community the way that Adobe/Avid are. Can anyone tell me how Adobe Premiere runs on MAC? Will I need to switch back to Windows if I end up going with Adobe?

Well said, Walter. While I can't stop shaking my head in dismay, you managed to sum it all up perfectly, particularly your estimation that Apple "just didn't want to take the time to re-write all of the features that made this a solid professional application". I am a "techie", so I'm not on the same level of skill or needs as a lot of you pros, but I have appreciated and enjoyed the level of control and features that FCP has provided and improved upon over the years. Now I'm really saddened that it looks like Apple is choosing the consumer route again (e.g. dropping Xserve, Mac iOS X 10.7 Lion, iPad > Mac) and not even giving the "serious folks" an option.

I started out learning about NLE on FCP 1.0 probably a little before most of you-- I was a system engineer for a Higher Ed sales agent, so I had to learn the program and present it on behalf of Apple before it was released. I remember thinking, "this is the coolest program I've ever seen! I can EDIT my own videos!" Now I can't figure out why Apple thinks this total re(non)thinking of the product is anywhere near acceptable for the folks who put FCP where it is today. I do, however, think it would probably be a great product to replace Final Cut Express. Reckon there's still time for Apple to drop "Pro" and morph the rest into Final Cut Xpress? Then update the _real_ FCP w/ some of the nice, new features, but don't totally bastardize the program like they have here.

Well, maybe that can happen in time. But in the meantime, I'm gonna get even more cozy w/ FCP 7-- I won't be buying this...thing. Thanks again for the great article.

The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse'. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. -- John C. Dvorak, 1984

No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. -- CmdrTaco talking about the iPod, Slashdot, 2001

All in all the worst product launch I've ever seen from Apple or pretty much any software manufacturer. -- Walter Biscardi, Creative Cow, 2011

In my mind, Final Cut Pro has always catered more to the novice who wants to make a film than to the professionals who need robust I/O and collaborative features. FCPX represents a huge shift in functionality, but I don't see any change in philosophy.

FCPX1 is not a practical replacetment for FCP7. It's Apple showing us nerds who like downloading v1 software what they've been working on for the past 2 years. I'd much rather they released this now than making us wait another 2 years while they finshed re-doing the multi-cam editor and all the other features still missing. If everything Apple has done doesn't excite you, that's fine, but there's no need to be negative about it, it's not going to stop the future. FCP7 still works just as well as it did yesterday.

Some of you are upset that FCPX is lacking features that facilitate the most mundane parts of editing. I can sympathize that you want software to do those things well, so that you don't have to worry about them, but this is how progress happens. Things are destroyed so that new things can be born. And in 2011, do you really want the best software company in the world to spend their time on tape I/O?

The era of "decks, xml, edl, broadcast monitors, and deliverables outside of youtube" is over. They're still important right this second from a business perspective, but the world is shifting. I can edit movies on my phone. Today, any middle class person with enough dedication has access to all the tools they need to make a film. Going forward, the role of an editor will no longer be someone who knows 100 hotkeys and how to use EDLs, but instead will be someone with good sense of timing, style, composition, etc.

I can see why all of this is scary to some of you. FCPX is a big milestone in the end of editing as a profession and the beginning of editing as a way of life, much the same way that the digital camera is affecting the photography profession. If your passions include telling stories and watching motion pictures, this should be welcome news.

You're missing the a big point which is, most of us don't need or want apple to customize our editing experience. We were doing great when we could customize and control FCP to work however we wanted to work. It was open, it was free. That is what helps us be creative. To be able to work in whatever way we want.

All i feel when i work in FCPX is that it is trying to make me work in a certain way that is uncomfortable. That is a philosophical difference in the software and one that has nothing to do with what features are there or aren't there. I don't see that changing in any upcoming versions unless they somehow add the ability to turn some of these things off and let the user take more control.

Don't get me wrong, this new version has a lot of great new features and it's fast. Unfortunately, they took away the freedom we all had to customize the way we work. Doing away with tracks? REALLY? how is that good? No editor i ever spoke to ever mentioned they could do their job better if the tracks were gone. They went a little too far without having someone give them a reality check. This is what happens. You get major backlash. All you have to do is read the reviews of the people that paid for the software on the appstore.

In my mind, Final Cut Pro has always catered more to the novice who wants to make a film than to the professionals who need robust I/O and collaborative features. FCPX represents a huge shift in functionality, but I don't see any change in philosophy.

I can definitely say Final Cut Pro has NEVER been catered towards the novice. If that was true, there's no way the product would have come to dominate the post production landscape across the television and film markets. I would not call Turner Broadcasting here in Atlanta a bunch of novices for example who happen to have hundreds of seats of Final Cut Pro installed.

I wouldn't call Walter Murch, the Coen Brothers and all the editors for whom their films were nominated and even won Academy Awards novices.

Final Cut Pro rose from an interesting alternative back in 1999 to the "go to" editing platform of choice for thousands of professional editors across the world because it was solid, professional tool. You could easily cut a broadcast television series (which we do a lot of) or a feature film (which it does a lot of).

X is not going to do that with first and foremost being the fact that you cannot bring in old Final Cut Pro projects.

You cannot have confidence output to an external monitor.

You must follow the X way of editing rather than developing your own customized workflow that is the most efficient for the way you work.

With Final Cut Pro there were literally 10 different ways to do just about everything which was great. This gave each editor a truly customizable experience with the product.

With X you more or less have the X way of doing things and while this will work for a great many people, it simply does not work for me. The same issues that came up for me, happen to resonate across many other editors' minds, hence the article.

There is no "right answer" here. There is what works for you. For a great many people, X is going to be a great tool for them to use. For myself, there are just too many things missing and quite honestly I'm afraid it's going to create a whole generation of editors with bad project management practices because it "just does it for you." But not necessarily in a good.

Hopefully the article was somewhat helpful to you and I wish you the best of luck moving forward with your endeavors!

If your passions include telling stories and watching motion pictures, this should be welcome news.

Do you know how a post-production pipeline generally works? You won't see Walter Murch or anyone in his class talk about how he cut a new movie on this system (at the very least not using this version of it).

I think the general consensus is that this vastly underwhelming launch has shown us that even if Apple is going to further develop FCPX with real professionals in mind, it'll take some time just to reach the point they were already at with FCP7. I really hope they do, and I hope that FCPX1.5 will be released this fall with a few critical additions : Video output, OMFI export, FCP7 project compatibility to begin with. Then the pros can really start to try it out in a real application.

"The era of "decks, xml, edl, broadcast monitors, and deliverables outside of youtube" is over. They're still important right this second from a business perspective, but the world is shifting."

The day that decks, xml and offline deliverables are obsolete is probably 5-10 years away. To make software that ENFORCES some possible future reality is naive at best.

As for the missing features, Adobe completely rewrote Premiere CS5 as 64-bit Cocoa native in a few years, all features intact. In fact, they added a ton of GREAT features. Why couldn't Apple do the same?

A lot of this is true and worrisome, but I feel like some of the complaints here stem from not really understanding how FCPX manages files or exploring that part of the software completely. The system doesn't store things on your local drive automatically, it asks you whether you want to store it on the local drive or an external volume. And its quite easy to share a project with multiple editors over multiple machines, all of the project and event data can be stored on external drives and if you need to quickly send the project to someone just send them the project folder and the folders of the events used by that project, they can put that stuff in the right place and bam, there you go. Stuff like like of EDL, XML, xsan, multicam etc is a dealbreaker for a lot of people but I feel the complaint of "one computer, one user" is just a muddy understanding how the metadata structure works. Again, this is a bit rigid for most "pro" users but if anyone has been paying attention to how apple handles total rewrites or new products (think Mac OS X, iMovie 08 and the iPhone) they tend to release a bare bones product and flesh it out over the next year or two.

Also, technically, Apple didn't "take out" any features, this is new software and everything had to be built from scratch. I sure the big "missing" features will return in 6 months time (or at least I hope).

Also, technically, Apple didn't "take out" any features, this is new software and everything had to be built from scratch. I sure the big "missing" features will return in 6 months time (or at least I hope).

Well, when you spend 2 to 4 years developing a complete re-write and many of the features used by editors everyday are missing, I call that "leaving out." But you're right it IS a complete re-write from the ground up.

But after waiting this long for the software to come out and seeing how badly they missed the mark (in my mind) I'm simply not going to wait any longer to "see what they add" Could be years before they finally add some of the features we need and by then who knows if FCP 7 will still work? :)

So for us, best to cut now since our entire infrastructure will play nice with other options out there. And if Apple really DOES create the best thing since sliced bread two years from now, it will be that easy for us to re-install it and pick right back up. I don't see that happening but you can never predict the future. You can only do what you need to do here and now.

I agree, I don't think Apple should have pulled the plug on FCP7 yet because FCPX definitely isn't ready for a lot of users. However, if you look at Apple's track record, they tend to do this a lot (release a new product that creates a new paradigm/introduces new technologies but is missing core features) and then polish it up and reintegrate the missing features in a year or two. If you look at Mac OS X, the new iMovie, and the iPhone, this is exactly what Apple did. At the time, many power users who love Mac OS X now felt it was a slow, buggy, overly simplistic, dumbed down OS that wasn't ready to be released. Likewise the iPhone didn't release with notifications, copy and paste, external applications or MMS, features phones have had for years! I feel like this is simply Apple's modus operandi. Maybe that style of software releases isn't compatible with the professional market, but I have no doubt Apple will be adding those pro features soon enough.

I planned on waiting for a couple months after X came out before I went and bought it. I was expecting it to be a more robust (read...professional) app when it came out, I won't lie about that.

However, even if it had everything that we wanted and expected it to be, first versions of any new software are buggy. Hence, my apprehension and willingness to wait.

Also, we all knew that any 3rd party plugins that we used regularly in our workflow would be unusable until the developers brought 64 bit versions to market. A user would have to start up FCP 7, import their video, apply the effect, and then export any video that they wanted to use with that filter in X. Whole lot of extra work. That's another factor in my decision to wait.

I'm really hoping Apple hasn't abandoned the professional editors out there. I'm willing to give them a little time to wipe the egg off their collective faces, give us some reassuring PR releases, and then back up what they say by giving us the tremendous product we were all hoping for.

Absolutely Bill, this is my point of view as well...
I do hope they will come around and add those extra features they had in FCP 7.

A quote from a friend:"FCP has code or patents that is licensed for it's multi-cam edit feature, and they are trying to "re-code" these costly dependencies out, as they move to 64-bit, OpenCL based sourcecode. They're also probably using the 80-20 rule; release the product missing 20% of the features, to make 80% of the people happy now."

Walter, this is the only accurate and satisfying article I have read on the FCP X. I couldn't agree more with everything you said. This is a $299 public beta, not a pro application, and certainly not a complete application. I just wish a big source like Gizmodo or Engadget would repost something like this. The more bad press Apple sees the better. This is a joke of a "PRO" app that is simply unusable. As for the 1.0 excuse, totally agreed, they've had 2 years how dare they present this as the same program as FCP7.

They need to start getting public about their future plans, exact timeframes, and exact features that they will and won't add, or many large companies will jump ship.

Another feature I couldn't find (could be wrong and may have missed it) was seeing source timecode in the timeline. For instance if you wanted to do a replace edit the way FCP7 does, there is no way to even see your source TC. Of course, why would there be when this program doesn't seem to get timecode or see a need for it, as its zooms to hundredths of a second instead of frames. Plus a replace edit as well know it, playhead to playhead doesn't seam to exist anymore either.

P.S. I am also pretty sick of people like Larry Joran and Phillip Hodgets defending Apple here. The fact that they aren't astounded by the lack of features says to me that they are trying to sell tutorials or books, not actually talking about the program from the perspective of a professional editor who has to rely on decks, xml, edl, broadcast monitors, and deliverables outside of youtube.

The only way I see this progression is that Apple discontinued FCP 2 years ago after the last update but declined to tell anyone. Then, having seen what someone did to iMovie, which they needed for their "domestic media product", they had a grand idea to make a bit of cash so repackaged it up as FCPX.

There must be something really wrong wandering through Apple mind

No one wants a version 1 product, no one needs a version 1 product. I am not going to pay them money to try out buggy, incomplete software they may, or may not fix sometime in the future. Someone wrote that it is based on some wonderful code and that in 18 months we will have something brilliant! What?? We've waited 3 years for something awesome and Apple does not have the reputation of sorting the problems, good ideas but they don't finish what they set out to do. They are not dipping their toe in the water then asking what we all think and if we like it they might think of making a product, they are trashing a brilliant product, why not hand it over to another company and let them do what Apple are sadly incapable of doing.

Not being too rude but ... what the hell were the beta test editors thinking of when they endorsed this product, didn't they tell Apple that they were barking up the wrong tree, if they didn't then they should not be beta testers because they are of no use to Apple or us! aAre they happily using FCPX now? I'm not a full pro but I can see at a glance that this is an unusable product and are Apple going to make it go anywhere? Nah, it's dead and gone

I have an Orange phone and an Apple computer, stick with fruit but beware ... fruit rots !

Re: Final Cut Pro X: What's Missing for Some Prosby james carey129755186

Spot on Walter, you've ticked off all the reasons I enjoy working with FCP7, as well as the reasons I won't be working with FCPX. PPro is looking like a good alternative, though my two FCP7 suites will be remain workhorses in the near term.
I also feel a bit different about Apple in general now, having been a vocal proponent for years. I do understand this was a business decision, but their decision affects my business, and I will not soon forget it.

this is a fantastic, accurate review. Your options are
1) stick with FCP7 for now (what most people will do)
2) switch to Adobe Premier (you already own it, and it works with all your hardware)
3) switch to AVID, but forget your shared storage, and AJA/Blackmagic products - it's got to be
all AVID.

That's a bit of an outdated view of Avid. I use it with an AJA I/O Express and I'm sure that more AJA cards will be supported soon. There is also plenty of opportunity to use non Avid media storage. If it's a non Avid network drive you just have to enter a console command to make it use it as a media drive. You won't be able to open projects on multiple stations like with an ISIS, but you can quite easily share bins and media.

Yep, Premiere is already a "plug and play" solution that works with our entire infrastructure already. In fact the folks from Small Tree have already been running tests with Premiere on the same SAN configuration with great results so we know we're good there.

But as for Avid, we know they are already planning to further open up the hardware at some point in the near future, but you bring up a great point about storage. Will they support third party SAN's? Good question to ask them.

Thanks for writing this. Spent 4 hours today that I didn't really have opening up FCP X, going through the emotions of "trying" to get excited about it in some way, all the way realizing, at my shop which has five purchased FCP Studio work stations, this is NEVER going to work for me. THank you for writing out the true deal killers - "sharing projects" between editors is something we do CONSTANTLY in our work flow. Using Photoshop layers - CONSTANTLY used. Sending projects to audio guys via OMF. THese emotions, with XML, are enough alone for any responsible business owner or even semi-pro editor with clients to appease, to step back and seriously contemplate a switch.

I bought 1.0 in 1999, and have been a freelancer editor ever since. IT would be wrong for me to be a snob about the focus of this release - I was a novice, would-be editor then, and that release gave me the means to go do what I really wanted to do. So, I'm a-okay with changing paradigms. I'll even cede that the idea of a timeline is something I've questioned over the last years, and I don't HATE using the magnetic timeline - could see myself getting to a place of enjoying that.

But I think as so many 3rd party software designers have really rocked anxillary solutions for FCP - Intelligent Assistant's amazing PrEdit which takes Avid's script based editing idea into an amazing direction, AV3's Get app which helps content editors find words and phrases with an instant search of the waveform, color tools for Red Bullit that make color not only easy but truly fun - it's amazing to me that innovation, as evidenced by FCP x, amounts to speed over precision.

No matter how many times people try to defend this release - unless you are an editor who works in the world and in which this is how you make your living, you will NOT get how amazingly sad the last 24 hours has been.

***

But now...what are our choices for moving forward? Surely, many of us will first make a list of the plug ins and hardware we have. I have CS5, and I've enjoyed Premiere the handful of times I've gone inside it.

Right now, I honestly need a "Premiere" or "AVid" for former Final Cut Pro users. I'm FINE learning a new app. I'm not happy about it, and I'm REALLY not happy about the money I'm going to have to spend to move my shop. (and yes people, we realize we don't have to move today, or tomorrow, but it is official, FCP as we know it is gone.)

Perhaps it's time to start a new thread - BEST PRACTICES FOR MOVING FROM FCP.

Thanks for the kind words and yes, I am going to start a complete blog series on my transition to a new NLE. I'm hoping it will be helpful to others that are thinking along the same lines.

A few of my friends have already invested in Avid but as they don't support my AJA Kona board just yet (was told at NAB it's coming) I will start by testing Premiere. In fact I just got the brand spankin' new book "An Editor's Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro" featuring the Creative Cow's own Richard Harrington and Robbie Carmen along with Jeff Greenburg. So that'll be a nice guide and I'll write up a review of the book for the Cow.

Walter, you should entitled this piece What's missing for MOST Pros. Very revealing article. I can handle a change in the interface and MAYBE not opening old projects, but not being able to move a project from one Mac to another is ABSURD. No wonder the did an end of lift to Final Cut Server, Final Cut Pro X renders it useless.

I've always found your insight to be on target. And this review is no exception. When I watched the release video of FCPX I heard the cheering in the audience and thought, "what professional editors would even attend such an event?". Then I realized Apple probably peppered the audience with shills to punctuate various points with cheering and hurrays.

I'd didn't buy the hyperbole then and I won't buy FCPX now. They honestly should remove the "P" and call it "Final Cut X". Apple obviously has decided to abandon the professional application field just as they abandoned XSAN.

Why spend the money developing pro apps that sell a few thousand when you can call something "Pro" and sell millions to editor wanna-bees? They'll get mileage out of having had a respectable editing program used by pros, but that glow will diminish with time and iMovie - I'm sorry - Final Cut X will just be another APP in the App Store™ (I'm including the TM so Apple won't come after me).

They still build a great computer and nice iPADs that don't play FLASH. (It's kinda their way or the highway.) I'll bet many professional NLE program developers are just as excited as the kiddies that will buy FC"P"X. This is leaving them a very large hole that they will fill with delight.

my concern is the lack of photoshop layers. the manual states photoshop files will come in flat? layering and compositing...is that even available with this new version? I'm an Avid editor from 1995 and Media Composer 5.5 as well as the CS5.5 suite look very good right now. But I'll wait several months before making a decision. I love apple products and I'll give them some time to make things right, but it's probably hard for them to care since iPhone, iTunes & apps make a mint for them. They don't make money off of Final Cut software sales. And I"ve never heard of Jobs ever promoting the pro apps like he does the consumer apps either.

Ted, it's true. But the workaround (I've found) is to use Motion to do anything with the PSDs if layer support is needed. But there is a bug there, ie. if you change the PSD file while Motion is open, the changes to the layers in Motion won't be reflected until after you close and reopen motion - even if you do a "reconnect media" before you close motion! In other words, the reconnect does not work as expected.

In Motion 4, PSD layers works perfectly, so it appears to be a bug in Motion 5.

Now, on the support that FCP7 has for PSDs, well, it was never very good anyway was it? Bringing in all the layers on a new sequence was not ideal, as what you want is to select the layers on import, as in Motion 4 no? Well, everyone has thier own workflow...

good point. i'm not a big motion efx editor so I don't use motion that often. I'm on the ENG side and my bread and butter is a/b roll editing news and sports packages. sometimes though i need to drop in a logo or graphic and keying can work sometimes, but i'll be spending more time with motion and after effects this coming august in some classes. Thanks

yes, it's finally time to spit out the KoolAid. Waiting for these two years with one eye open has focused my attention on Grass Valley's Edius with many real time features so long missing from FCP. The urgency that Walter (may have) described in moving on is justified due to the assured non-development of a deadend product (FCP7) from a consumer focused company. If there is a wholesale change to be made in the edit suite, it will not be with FCPX, and this transition will be painful nonetheless, but I think holding on for the past two years was more painful-now knowing the final disposition of FCP.

Interestingly enough, it's a breeze to open Final Cut Pro projects in Premiere CS5 and vice versa. That's a big reason we're testing that system first along with the fact that they already support our AJA Kona boards which at this time Avid does not.

Thank you Walter,
I'll stick for sometime with FCP 7, but I agree with Roger : Smoke look better every minute.
I am one man band and a freelance so my loss is not huge but I feel for the big Post houses that invested so much.
BTW I suggested to a client for the moment to get the upgrade to 7 ASAP.
Macmall is out as of today, we found it at B&H.

Final Cut Pro 7 can be had for a very short time but you need to call your VARs NOW if you want to try to get them. But we're not going to bother, best to just start testing new solutions now and then we'll make our break to another NLE probably within the next few months.

Yes, Smoke is something that we are actually going to look at as well since it's on the Mac.

I was honestly expecting FCP X to be a Smoke & Flame killer. As a Flame & Smoke owner/user, I'm delighted that Apple didn't create it. Smoke is a great editor and effects program and if you make the change, you'll never regret it. The ability to create and import 3d objects into the editing environment is amazingly powerful. It really is a no apologies program and the price tag reflects it.

I also own two seats of FC 7 and am amazed by Apple's foible. Every week I'm importing FCP EDLs and OMFs for conform, effects and color correction in Flame and Smoke. To decide professional users don't need that ability is arrogant silliness.

I think there is just an uncertainty as to what is going to be the standard from this point on. Adobe Premiere Pro seems like the likely alternative at this point. Every other program i use to make videos is from Adobe anyway (PS, AE, IL). However Avid really does draw a lot of my attention as well.

FCP worked for me 10 years but this NEW timeline and NEW organization tools are incredibly limiting. I have always been able to use the timeline as my artboard or canvas, and it's incredibly hard to do that in FCPX.

Who thought that the idea of tracks and timelines needed to be re-inveted? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Would have loved a FCP X that was a logical progression from FCP 7...

Re: Final Cut Pro X: What's Missing for Some Prosby David Jahns129761306

Smoke is quite a different beast - both at price point and functionality.

I currently use FCP 7 for offline editing, and the whole FCStudio for broadcast finishing, which was never great but did the job when necessary. I've been very keen on getting S-MAC as finishing tool, but certainly not as an editing tool.

I, too, realize that FCP 7 still works as well as it did on Monday, but let's be honest... It's still the 2007 version. We've shown a lot of patience, and I am very disappointed, and am looking into other options.

After NAB, I wrote quite a few posts defending Apple, and cited how the transitions OS 9 to X, and G5 to Intel, etc... - those we handled quite well, I thought.

This is just the rug being pulled out from under us - no other way to describe it.

I agree with you David. To say I'm upset is an understatement. But being mad at Apple and switching in a hurry isn't really going to help you either. Nobody is saying you should stick with FCP7 forever, but maybe long enough to see what Apple does, and what others do.

Great review you posted - it's spot on. Giving yourself a month to shed Final Cut, I can't agree there. Earlier today it's what I thought I'd do, but I settled down, realised that my FCP7 setup is still pretty solid and it's not going anywhere.

I'll be keeping my eyes open, and the whole thing is opening up a huge space for Premiere. Don't give up too soon - hang on to your FCP stations and expect a usable, Kona-driving, SAN-friendly, FCP7-importing, OMF-exporting, Color/DaVinci-compatible monster later this year. That's what I'll do. If not, there's always Avid.

Great article. As I read it I felt like it was exactly how I felt. I'm not ready to give up on FCP yet (because we can't because of a series that we have), but definitely going to start exploring adobe and avid.

Media 100 still my favorite editing system of all time, was on there for 6 years. Offline / Online is the one thing Final Cut Pro NEVER got right.

I still remember offlining a piece in Media 100, then select the timeline, select the new resolution and say "Capture." And it ONLY captured the clips in the timeline, not that extra 5 hours of stuff in the bins that I didn't need.

I applaud Boris FX for carrying the Media 100 banner, I'll always have a soft spot for that NLE.

Totally agreed! I will not being using final cut in the future.... you know, because it's now imovie. I'm totally abhorred by Apple's misstep on this. I seriously hope they bring the pro version back, or it's right back to Avid.

Great explanation & overview of the missing features of the new FCPX. I am prepared to wait a little while.....see what happens. FCP 7 works fine for the moment and I think many will take the same attitude . However, I think the sleeper issue is will FCP7 work on Lion, if not there's going to be a stampede, maybe to Premier.

This situation reminds me of 10 years ago when Avid held sway then along came FCP, suddenly avid found itself loosing market share with its expensive software. Today it could be the reverse, cheap software cant compete with more professional software. But one thing for sure I never go back to Avid & its cumbersome ways.

I said I would NEVER buy an Avid at one time too, but never say never now. Just like I won't say "I will never go back to FCPX" because who knows what they will have in a couple of years.

But I will say the Avid company that I met at NAB this past year was the most open and listening Avid company I've ever seen. They were very open about the fact that they've screwed up their customer relations in the past and they are actively working to make their community more open like the FCP community.

Will they totally get there? I don't know, but I do know that I will try their product if they make good on their promise to open the AJA Kona boards to their product. I'm thinking we may have a mix of Adobe Premiere and Avid moving forward which will make our shop more accessible to the needs of even more projects here in town. This will probably be better than locking ourselves down to a one NLE system.

This is what Richard Harrington currently does in DC with FCP, Avid and Premiere all in use in his facility. Not a bad idea, really. Best of luck to you Mike as you move forward!

thanks walter. i think many people who make their living editing everyday feel the same way. It really is the uncertainty that kills me.

I think there are great new features, and the lack of some of the features don't really worry me as much as just the philosophical shift. I want a timeline that doesnt force me to edit in a certain way... the timeline is my canvas... i can be messy... i need to be messy for me to figure stuff out.. i'll later polish and clean it up... The point is, we were free to do things the way we wanted to. This new version is incredibly fascist.

After 25 years as an editor, compositor, and VFX artist, frequent Creative COW poster and tutorial author Simon Ubsdell knows what he needs from a keyer -- and knew he wasn't getting good enough results from FCPX or Motion. Discussions in COW forums led him to create the highly regarded Hawaiki Keyer. Enthusiasm expressed by COW members for its latest release led us to ask Simon for a tour. If you're keying on a Mac, you're going to want to check this out.

NLE interface design pioneer and longtime editor David Lawrence first wrote about the editing approach of FCPX, including its highly controversial Magnetic Timeline, soon after FCPX's release in the spring of 2011. Time has passed, the editing landscape has changed, and 4 years later, David takes another well-reasoned, hype-free look at the heart of Apple's new paradigm.

Former skeptic John Davidson was right there with everyone else when FCPX was released who deemed it a complete disappointment for broadcast pros. Many updates and much experimentation later, he's now a believer: he has FCPX not only running on shared storage for broadcast work, but for John, it does so even better than FCP 7 ever did. Here he introduces a 5-part series, taking you step-by-step from project set-up to delivery, ready to help other broadcast pros get moving with FCPX.

With five edit suites currently running at Biscardi Creative Media, and four more on standby, Walter Biscardi and crew need the best possible performance our of their workflow and machines. Here, Walter describes the power (yes, power) of the iMac, the workhorse Adobe Premiere Pro, and some never say never insight on FCP X.

A group of editors gathered at a Hollywood Post Alliance Sales Resource Group luncheon to debate the merits of today's nonlinear editing systems. In the process, they argued less over tools and complained more about an ever-changing workflow. And, yes, there are a few fans of FCPX.

After coming across and commenting on a post in the forums concerning FCPX and its current popularity and possibility for serious editing use, Charlie Austin was contacted by Tim Wilson to expand his original thoughts for Bovine consumption. Care to chew the cud with us?

Herein lies the cautionary tale of a long-time user of Final Cut Pro, penned for those who would consider switching NLEs. Are there tools that will positively replace FCP 7? Are there NLEs that are even more powerful than our now evanescent favorite?

Dennis Kutchera went to Vegas with a goal - to be tantalized by the new colour-grading options - in essence, to cheat on his beloved Avid. What happens in Vegas, this time, comes back with some great stories.

Convenience is more important than quality -- I've taught a couple of generations of students that understanding this basic reality is a great way to predict just about any future media trend, and in the case of NAB, it looks like the equation has not lost a molecule of relevance.